


Settler

by iliveatlast



Series: Shiner-verse [3]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Child Abuse, Found Family, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Past Child Abuse, Racism, Slurs, Young Daryl Dixon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:35:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 16
Words: 49,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24199069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iliveatlast/pseuds/iliveatlast
Summary: The prison is their best chance, Daryl knows it. But how good a chance is that, anyway, with people who aren't even his kin?Season 3, Shiner-verse.
Series: Shiner-verse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1743010
Comments: 11
Kudos: 75





	1. Long Winter

**Author's Note:**

> Okay - onto season 3! Although we'll start a little before it and work our way in.

It's three days after they lose the farm that Hershel remembers about the fucking stitches.   
  
There's a sewing kit in Maggie's car with the tiniest pair of scissors Daryl's ever seen. Hershel commandeers the whole kit - scissors, needle, thread, even buttons - for his sad medicine kit. Daryl thinks about his dad's pills, the antibiotics, the oxy, all of it at the bottom of his bag in a house they can never go back to. He hopes he doesn't need anymore stitches - he's like to end up with pink or green ones, with the thread in that kit, and he'd really rather not.   
  
"These are more than ready to come out," Hershel says, and he snips the ones on the side of Daryl's head almost before Daryl even realizes it's happened. He flinches, too late, but it doesn't hurt - just a little pull, some pressure, and then a release. He reaches up and rubs at the spot.   
  
"There, see? Like nothing," Hershel proclaims, dropping the spent stitches into the cupholder in the backseat of Maggie's car. Daryl stares at it, repulsed. He hopes Hershel remembers to throw them out later.  
  
"Whatever," Daryl grunts. He wants to be out hunting. It's a supply day - people have split all over, gone to town, some to the nearby abandoned houses. Daryl wants to be in the woods but Hershel said not until he did this.   
  
"All right. Your side now."  
  
He lifts the side of his shirt up a little. Hershel shakes his head.  
  
"Whole shirt. Come on, I'll be quick." Hershel peeks out the car window. T-Dog is standing behind the car, gun in hand, scanning back and forth, back and forth. 

Daryl hesitates. But the faster Hershel finishes, the faster he can go. And it's been awhile since Shane - anyway. It's like Hershel said before. Nothing he hadn't seen before, when he was stitching Daryl up in the first place.  
  
Before he can psych himself out, he whips off his shirt. 

The front goes fast. Just like Hershel said. It's done in barely a moment, it feels like, and when Daryl looks down, the scar from the stitches is small and flat. He can barely notice it next to all the other shit on his belly.   
  
He looks at Hershel uneasily, but he's just dropping the used stitches into the cupholder again. Gross.   
  
"Almost done. Last part."  
  
Hershel's voice is low and slow, like he was talking to the horses - the horses, Daryl had realized yesterday for the first time, the horses had been locked up in their stalls, just walker bait, waiting. It hurts his heart to think about it, about Nervous Nellie rearing back, spooked, as the walkers -

So he flips around and tries not to think about it.   
  
He doesn't feel anything at all this time, and at first he thinks maybe Hershel's just gotten really good at this. Then he realizes that Hershel hasn't even started. He's staring, instead, staring at Daryl's back with angry eyes, and Daryl realizes he's miscalculated.   
  
He reaches for his shirt, but Hershel barks "Don't!" and he freezes. Hershel reaches out and prods his back. "Daryl, what is this?" Daryl doesn't say anything, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. "What is this?"  
  
" 'S'my fuckin' back," Daryl mumbles. "Know you were a vet'rinarian an' all first old man, but -"  
  
"Don't," Hershel says. He looks a little wild eyed and Daryl is suddenly very aware of how close they are to each other, how cramped the car is. There's nowhere to go if he wanted to, and Carol's paired with Lori as they go looking for pregnancy shit.   
  
"Ain't nothin' you ain't seen before," Daryl says, echoing Hershel's on words back to him. "Remember? When you stitched me up, you saw -"  
  
"You have significant scarring on your back," Hershel says. No one's ever come out and said it before. But who would? His dad? Merle? "I have seen that before. But that doesn't explain why you have fresh marks - do not," Hershel says severely as Daryl opens his mouth. "Do not. The only thing I want to hear from you is the truth."  
  
The car is too close, too tight - there's nowhere to go, even if he lunged for the front seat and tried the driver's door Hershel'd have him in a heartbeat, there's nowhere -   
  
Hershel's hand is on his shoulders then and he flinches. HIs eyes snap to Hershel's face. Hershel looks contrite, a little guilty, but he doesn't move his hands.   
  
"You need to take a deep breath," Hershel says. Daryl tries but it's hard, harder than it should be. "Very good. Now out. And another. Very good."   
  
By the time he's breathing normally again he's humiliated and he's mad and he reaches for his shirt again.   
  
"Daryl." He doesn't stop, just yanks his shirt over his head angrily. What makes it any of Hershel's fucking business? Shane's dead and he's never gonna whup him again. His father's gone too. Sure, he's not stupid enough to think nobody's ever going to wallop him again when he fucks up, but they won't be like Shane, maybe won't even be like his dad. What's the point in talking about any of it when it's over?  
  
"Daryl, please." The old man sounds broken and Daryl scowls at the floor. Kicks the seat in front of him.  
  
"What?" he growls. He won't look at Hershel. Just keeps looking at the front seat.   
  
"I need to know how you got these marks. Please."  
  
"Dunno. Maybe when the walkers attacked at the farm."  
  
"They didn't lay a finger on you. You said that already."  
  
Daryl kicks the chair hard. "Maybe I forgot."  
  
"Daryl."  
  
"What?" he explodes. "What? They don't - they ain't fresh, all right? Dunno what you want me to say. They ain't -"  
  
"Daryl if someone here is hurting you, we need to do something about it right now."  
  
"Nobody here is hurtin' me," he growls, and he almost wants to laugh. How come no one ever figures this shit out when they could actually do something about it? Why is it always afterwards?  
  
"You're not the only child here. What if whoever did this to you does it to Carl? Or Beth?"  
  
"I told you, old man, nobody is hurtin' me here. They're old."  
  
Hershel is looking at him again with calculating eyes. "How old?"  
  
Daryl shrugs. "I'unno. Like a month or something. I don't know."  
  
"I gave you stitches twelve days ago and you didn't have these marks then." Twelve days. It feels like a lifetime.  
  
"He ain't here," Daryl said sharply. "A'right? Don't need to do nothin' about it. He ain't here."

"Daryl -"  
  
"I don't want to fuckin' talk about it anymore!" he bursts out, and his fists are clenched and his breathing is getting faster again.   
  
"Calm down. Take a breath."  
  
He doesn't want to do what Hershel says but calming down feels like a good idea. It's scary to be in this car screaming at Hershel when Hershel could - 

"I jus' - I get it. You're worried 'bout Beth an' Carl. But -"  
  
"I'm not just worried about Beth and Carl."  
  
"Well, don't worry 'bout me. I'm fine. Don't even hurt no more. Forgot they were there," he says. Hershel is quiet for a long time.   
  
"You know the farm was in my family for one hundred and sixty years?"  
  
Daryl looks at Hershel, but Hershel isn't looking at him.   
  
"I never wanted it." 

Daryl thinks back to the farm - the woods, the fields, the pond with the Cherokee roses, the smell and sounds of the stables. He thinks about the cabin - small and cramped and smelling like booze and mildew and meth. He had a place like the farm, he'd never fucking leave.   
  
"I left home when I was a little older than you. Did I ever tell you that?"   
  
He shrugs.   
  
"My father - well." Hershel looks at Daryl, and Daryl looks away. "I think your father and mine had a lot in common."  
  
Oh. He's hinted at it before, but he's never said it so clear. Daryl kicks at the seat again. "How w'd you know?" he asks. "Ain't like you met him. You got no clue."

"I told you. It's nothing I haven't seen before."   
  
Daryl looks at Hershel - still wearing a goddamn button down shirt and suspenders - and he sees the collar of the white tee shirt poking out from the neck. Layered up. He looks away.   
  
"So?"  
  
"I ran away at fifteen and I told myself I'd never go back." Daryl thinks about his father, about his plans. Turn sixteen and drop out and go live with Merle. If his dad hadn't left him, abandoned him like some kind of dog he didn't want anymore, would Daryl ever think about him? Would he ever want to be near Will Dixon again, if it'd been his own choice? "And I didn't until after my father was dead. I didn't even attend the funeral. He hadn't earned that. I never regretted it."   
  
It's weird to look at Hershel, white haired and dignified, those stupid suspenders, his quiet and even tone, and think of him as some bloody, scared fifteen year old, running away from his old man. He can't see it. Hershel wouldn't run from a herd of walkers - Rick had to drag him away. Daryl thinks about his dad - about how he'd been planning on how to get away, but he'd never had the guts to run. Running and getting brought back was one of the worst things he could think of, he'd never risked it. He wasn't brave enough.  
  
"We all have scars," Hershel says softly, and Daryl feels his lip curl. They don't. Not like that. They don't. 

"You're a good kid, Daryl." He shifts in the seat at that, twists himself towards the window. He's not. He hears them say this, Rick and Hershel and Carol, even T-Dog, and he doesn't know what to say to them to get them to understand - he's not. He's never been good at anything, certainly not at being a good person. He'd never seen how. Merle was probably the best person he knew, and Merle was high half the time and had a rap sheet longer than Daryl's whole body. The best he can do is try not to beat the shit out of anybody who didn't deserve it, and he thinks that's a pretty low bar.  
  
"M'not a kid," he says instead, and Hershel looks at him.   
  
"You deserve to be looked after," he says, and Daryl stiffens. "You and Carl and Beth, you all deserve that. You deserve to be kept safe."  
  
"Ain't nobody here could keep me safer'n I can keep myself," he spits, and Hershel's face is sad.   
  
"Well. In a lot of ways, that might be true. But in others -" Hershel's hand ghosts over his arm. "In others, maybe it's not."   
  
Daryl doesn't say anything. His head is spinning and he doesn't know what Hershel wants from him. He closes his eyes, leans back against the seat. None of these people make any fucking sense.   
  
"I need you to tell me one thing, and then I won't ask anymore until you want me to." Daryl will never want him to. "Was it Shane?"  
  
Daryl hardly breathes. Then, so fast maybe Hershel won't even see it, he jerks his head.   
  
"Does Rick know?"  
  
The thought makes Daryl freeze. Does Rick know? Does anybody? He thinks Carol might have guessed, after Carl got her at the farm, but he doesn't know if she knows he actually whupped him. And Carl saw how Shane was with Daryl but he didn't seem to understand what that meant. If Rick knows and didn't say anything, that means he thinks Shane was right, and that means maybe the group isn't safest for Daryl after all.   
  
Rick's done all right by him, he'd told Carol. But will he continue? He's angrier now, since Shane died. Edgier. Like there's something broken he can't fix and it makes him mad. Is it only a matter of time until he gets so mad he goes for Daryl?  
  
Rick had loved Shane. So had Carl. And Lori, in some way. They had thought he was good. As good as Rick.   
  
They had been wrong. 

He doesn't say anything. Hershel's hand ghosts over his shoulder again, and Daryl pulls away.   
  
"We done here?"  
  
"Turn over."  
  
He doesn't for a long moment, until Hershel holds up the scissors. They look comically small in his hands. "Let's get this done and get you out of here."  
  
Daryl couldn't agree more. 

* * *

In some ways, Daryl likes being on the road. He rides the dirt bike, when they can get gas for it - it fits in the back of Hershel's pickup, so sometimes they load it in there and he rides next to it, crossbow in hand, surrounded by their supplies, whatever tents and sleeping bags and food and ammo they've scrounged up, eyes tracking along as they drive, looking for possibilities. They sleep rough most nights, camping, until it's too cold even for Daryl and they start squatting in houses instead. 

They don't fight as much with him and Carl about them being kids, on the road. Something happened to Carl, that night on the farm, something he doesn't talk about but that made him harder. Daryl thinks of the boy who beat Glenn at Uno, who had looked at him with shining eyes and say "I think it'll be one of us who finds her." Maybe that boy is still there somewhere, but not here. Not here.   
  
He's useful on the road, even more useful than he'd been at the farm, or at the camp. He's lived like this before, always looking over one shoulder, building a life out of the bits and pieces he can. He knows the woods of Georgia like his own heartbeat and he tells Rick where is good to camp, where isn't, and Rick listens. They all do. He bags game as long as he can, until winter really starts to set in and things get quiet.   
  
They're all quieter on the road. He doesn't know if part of it is the trauma or whatever the fuck of whatever happened on the farm - Lori and Carl and Rick look haunted sometimes, but aren't all of them? Aren't the plagued by dead people and ghosts? - or just that the walkers are everywhere, behind every tree, but everyone talks less. They come up with signals, whistles and hand gestures, and Daryl gets a look from Rick that's half disapproving, half incredulous when he makes a silencer for Carl out of an old baseball bat, a trick Merle had taught him. He doesn't say anything when Rick jury rigs something similar out of a flashlight. In some ways it suits him, this prolonged silence. It means he doesn't have to talk as much, use words that normally slip around in his mouth and betray him anyway. But sometimes, like when they're somewhere fenced in and Beth sings at the end of the night, low and sweet, sometimes he misses everyone talking and laughing around the campfire, even though he never partook. Sometimes, he misses noise.  
  
He knows if they had a choice, they wouldn't use him. But they don't have a choice. Of able bodied men, it's Rick and Glenn and T-Dog, and Daryl knows more about shooting than T-Dog and Glenn combined, at least at the beginning. People learn quick though. They always do.  
  
It's not that the women aren't able - although Lori's stomach grows so quick he can hardly believe it, especially as food becomes scarcer and the rest of them get thinner and thinner. Maggie's fast and hits hard, and Carol could do anything she had to. And it's not like anybody is dead weight, not when being dead weight would literally get you killed. But the women cluster around Lori, like some sort of natural instinct to protect her, and Hershel is slow, and so they hang back, mostly, at least when clearing a crowd of walkers, which is mostly what they have to do. Daryl remembers those first days at the camp near Atlanta, coming across one geek at a time, and he misses that.   
  
Then he thinks how weird it is that he misses when there was only one undead fuck at a time trying to eat his face. 

Hershel doesn't talk to him about scars again, and Daryl is glad.   
  
Carol is near him whenever they set down for the night, whenever they dish out food. He finds himself hungry in a way he'd never forgotten, hunger like a claw in his stomach, curling tighter and tighter all the time. She gives him just as much food as everyone else, no more, but he tries to give some of it back to her, or to Carl. He's used to this. They ain't. But she just looks at him with one eyebrow raised and eventually he's too hungry even to try and pass up any food that comes his way.   
  
He's as hungry as Carl that time Carl tries to eat dog food, and when Rick takes it from him and throws it at the wall Daryl flinches. Watches the brown stuff ooze out of the can, drip onto the floor. Wasted.   
  
One owl for ten people isn't much. But at least it's something. 

He and Carl and Beth aren't exactly treated like kids anymore, but Beth and Carl get different duties than Daryl. They stand watch, they bring up the rear. Daryl goes in in first groups, looks at maps with the adults. He feels himself growing taller, even though he doesn't know how, and his voice feels deeper to him, although maybe it's just raspiness since he uses it so seldom. He thinks he might be growing facial hair too, and he hopes it grows quick enough that the others will see it and understand. He's not a kid. He doesn't need to be pampered or protected. He's the one who should be doing the protecting.   
  
And even though no one is happy, even though Rick is short tempered, even though there are close calls and rough fights and injuries, it's the longest Daryl has even gone in his life without being hit.   
  
It's seven months and eight days in when he and Rick find the prison. 


	2. Seed

Daryl gets a rush when they go out on a mission. A hint of adrenaline, not quite pleasure, but close to it. He likes having a purpose, a job, and they've gotten good, over the winter - they all move in tandem, like pieces to one big machine. He wonders if Merle felt like this in the army, if that was why he joined, but then he remembers how Merle socked that officer and figures not. It's nothing like hunting with his father - they never felt like a team, not like this. He and his dad were never moving parts of one whole. It's different. 

Even just getting into the secure walkway around the prison is a relief - to only have to be aware of the walkers on either side, instead of worrying from all angles. He's in the front - all he has is his bow and the homemade arrows, he's faster than Rick, who has a bag slung over his shoulder - and when Rick catches up to him, Daryl feels freer than he's felt in months. He grins at Rick, but Rick doesn't have eyes for him. He's looking at the prison. 

"It's perfect," Rick says. And Daryl agrees. 

"So how do we shut the gate?" Hershel asks. Daryl squints at the field, starts counting walkers. It's a lot, but they're good now. They can do this. 

"I'll do it. You guys cover me."

"No," Maggie says behind Glenn, shaking her head. "It's a suicide run."

It'd only be suicide if they didn't have Glenn's back. They do. Daryl does. 

"I'm the fastest," Glenn protests. But he's also not the quickest with the gun. 

"No. You, Maggie, and Beth draw as many as you can over there." Rick points. "Pop 'em through the fence. Daryl, go back to the other tower." Daryl's already trotting that way, past Carol, who squeezes his shoulder - he'll let her do it now almost all the time, even though with the others it still makes him mad. "Carol, you've become a pretty good shot," he hears Rick say as he makes his way to the tower, and he grins. Daryl'd worked with her. She was getting to be a great shot. Carol catches up with him, takes the other side of the guard balcony. 

"You think we can really do this?" she asks, and he can hear her quashing the hope in her voice as she asks, eyes on Rick as he advances towards the gate. 

He shrugs. "Well. 'Bout to find out."

Popping them through the gate is right - it's like some weird carnival game, watching Glenn and them line up the walkers and take them down, one by one, quick. But Daryl only watches for a second. Then he's covering Rick. 

Rick isn't as fast as Glenn, but he's surer footed - he can run and fire off a headshot at almost the same time. One of the walkers gets too close and Daryl gets it through the eye with an arrow - he sees Rick's head look his direction, sees a little nod, and he tries to ignore how warm that makes his stomach feel. He keeps picking off walkers, trying to chose the right ones - trying to figure out whose path will intersect with Rick's first and work outward, buy Rick as much time as possible - and then the gate is closed and Rick is disappearing into the other guard tower. 

"He did it," he hears Carol say, and he can hear the hope bubbling up in her voice. He did it. This might really happen. 

"Light it up!" he yells to Hershel and Carl, to Lori and the others in the fence. And they do. He sees Rick appear at the top of the guard tower inside, settle in. He sees Rick shake his head - laugh, maybe. Daryl feels like he's grinning like a fool as he takes his targets out, one after another. 

And then there's only one walker left. And then, there's none. 

They did it. 

* * *

"Fantastic," Carol is saying elatedly as they round the corner, and Carl grins up at Daryl.   
  
"Nice shootin'," he says, and he feels both Carl and Carol beam. 

Carol's like a kid, running through the field - it is more space since they've left the farm, space that's theirs, not shared with walkers. He wonders if he should think it's weird, how happy they are to be locked in a prison, skipping through fields of rotting corpses, but all he can really feel is accomplishment. 

Everyone is laughing, running, and T-Dog raises his arms and whoops. Daryl's about to shush him when he realizes - he doesn't need to. 

He's set up on the flipped over truck near the gate - he hears everyone else around the fire eating, talking, but Rick is still circling the fences and Daryl knows the feeling. He won't let his eyes off the gate until they're sure, until they know nothing's coming in. No use celebrating if they all get eaten in the night.   
  
There's fingers there at the edge of the car and he stiffens, but it's just Carol. He leans down, helps her up. 

"It's not much. But if I don't bring you something, you won't eat at all."   
  
He grunts, looks at the food. "Lori prob'ly needs it," he says, but he's already picking at the food with his fingers. "The baby." He tries not to think too hard about whose baby it is - if there's a little Shane in there, waiting to come out.   
  
"You worry about yourself," Carol scolds him, but it's routine - she's smiling when she does it. She looks out over the field, past the fence into the woods. "Rick's gotten us a lot farther than I ever thought he would, I'll give him that," she says, and Daryl knows she's not giving it just to Rick. She's giving it to him, because he'd been the one to say they should stay, because he hadn't made the wrong choice. "Shane could never have done that."  
  
He grunts, fills his mouth. Shane never could. 

Carol shifts and he focuses on her shoulder. "S'wrong?"   
  
"It's that rifle. The kickback? I'm just not used to it."   
  
Daryl hesitates. Carol touches him now - a hand on the shoulder every now and then, a touch at his elbow. But he never initiates. He doesn't touch her. Before he can think about it, he puts down the plate, licks his fingers clean. "Hol' on," he mumbles, and she turns around.   
  
He tries to remember when he first started shooting the hunting rifle, in the backyard with Merle, target practice. Crying that night in his room because his shoulder hurt so bad and because his dad'd been pissed they'd used the rifle without asking. He hadn't done much to Daryl - just a smack to the face before Merle broke it up, shoving his dad, cussing. But his dad had beat the shit out of Merle, and he was scared Merle'd be mad at him now, that he'd hate Daryl for always getting him in trouble, he wouldn't hang out with Daryl anymore and his shoulder hurt so bad -   
  
And Merle'd come in and said "Hush up. You'll wake him." Merle turned Daryl over and pushed into his shoulders, deep, his rough touch warm and gentle. "You'll be a'right. S'over."   
  
He tries to hit Carol in the same places, but soon it's too much and he drops his hands, turns away, goes for his plate. "Better get back," he grunts.   
  
Carol's looking at him and she's smiling. "That helps. Thanks, pookie."   
  
He scoffs at that, wrinkles his nose - he ain't no one's 'pookie.' She laughs at that, and he feels himself blush.   
  
"M'going down first," he says, and he starts to hop down.   
  
"I'm right behind you," she says. And she is. 

Beth's singing when they get back - louder than he's heard her for a while. He likes it when she sings - it's slow and sweet and like nothing he'd ever heard before all this, old music, deep. Maggie joins in, which she never does, and the fire is on everyone's face and it looks warm, it looks close, it looks like home.   
  
And then Rick is telling everyone the work isn't done yet, and of course it's not. It never is. But it was nice for a minute, to forget that.

* * *

Hand to hand is hard, but he's done harder. There's gold on the ground, on the walkers - shields and helmets, armor, and it's hard to get it - although maybe that's the best thing. We need that, Daryl thinks as they fight the guards. We need that, we need - 

"Daryl!" Rick yells, and Daryl backs him up.   
  
Maggie figures out how to get under the helmets and then it's quick - there's more walkers behind the gate, the other courtyard. But they're closer than they've ever been to something like real safety, and they can't stop there. They have to keep going.   
  
The inside is dark but not as dark as Daryl thought, and it's quiet. Something drips from the ceiling and there's bangs and creaks far out in the distance, but it's far away. Daryl looks around. He'd never been to see Merle when Merle was locked up, in juvie or after - his dad wasn't ever gonna give him a ride up there, and Daryl'd been too young to figure out another way. He wonders if this is like where Merle was as they push on. He wonders where Merle is, but he pushes that thought away with the ease of long practice and instead starts taking down the walkers in the cells. Tries not to think about what must have happened to them - none of them have any wounds. Starvation. Abandoned, left. Locked up and let to die.   
  
Daryl focuses instead on shoving the knife in and out, putting them down. They're so close. They're so close.

C Block is theirs and the others set quick to making it a home for them. Rick has a set of keys, and he gives another set to Hershel. Hershel holds them in his hand a moment, then hands them to Daryl.   
  
Daryl looks at him. "I'm not planning on leaving this block anytime soon," Hershel says. "You hold onto them." And Daryl takes them. They're heavy in his hand, and he clears his throat. Looks away.  
  
"Ain't sleepin' in no cage," Daryl says, not thinking about the prisoners starving in their cells, not thinking about being trapped. He thinks of Merle, and he spits. "I'll take the perch."

Carl and Beth are poking around in one of the cells and when Hershel comes up behind them Carl turns bright red and is gone in a flash.   
  
Hershel and Beth have one cell, Glenn and Maggie another. Carol and Lori go off together and Rick is prowling, over and over, like he can't believe this is real, like there's got to be something wrong and he won't rest until he finds it. Daryl flops over on the upper walkway, shoves his pack under his head. Looks up and, strangely, finds he's missing the night sky.

And then, for the first time in a long time, maybe in seven months, they rest.

* * *

Somehow it's always the weapons they find first. Flashbangs, CS triple chasers. There's armor and Daryl grabs at it, but it's so rank that he'd have to be dead himself to wear it. He tosses it away. Made it this far without it. 

"You won't need that," Rick is saying to Carl as they suit up, all of them. Even Hershel, in case they find the med bay and they need him to tell them what's what. "I need you to stay put."  
  
"But -" Carl looks outraged. "You're kidding. Daryl -"  
  
"We don't know what's in there."  
  
"So why does Daryl get to go and I -"  
  
"Daryl is four years older than you. It's not a discussion. Something goes wrong, you could be the last man standing. I need you to handle things here."  
  
Carl takes it - in good enough grace, he takes it. That's what the long winter did for them. "Sure," he mutters. Daryl catches him looking at him - not jealousy, but a flash of something in his eyes, but then Carl turns away, checks his gun. The last man standing. 

* * *

The tombs are dark with no windows, no exterior light, just flashlights darting everywhere, the smell of spray paint as Glenn marks their trail - and then there they are, finally, the walkers, and they're all running in the dark, flashlights spinning wildly as they get away - 

Without Glenn and Maggie. "We have to go back," Hershel says, and for a moment Daryl is terrified Rick will say no, that they'll have to leave them - 

But it's not even a discussion. "Which way?"  
  
For once, it's Hershel leading. "Maggie?" he calls out, low, careful. "Mag?"  
  
And then Hershel is screaming, screaming and Daryl can't see why until the muzzle flash, Rick putting down the walker as Hershel wheezes, groans. Not Hershel, Daryl thinks numbly, looking at him, his face turning red and then totally white. Not Hershel, he's good, he's made it so far, he's -

"No! Daddy!" Then Maggie is screaming without words, a death knell, and Rick and T-Dog scoop Hershel up and Rick is yelling 'go, go!' And Daryl brings up the rear. He's always at the rear, or the front. He should have been at the front, not Hershel, he's so fucking stupid, how could he let - 

And then they are through and there is light and he and T-Dog are bracing themselves against the door as Glenn and Rick lay Hershel out. Maggie is stroking his face, frantically, and he's still whimpering, moaning - but as quiet as he can, Daryl realizes. Even now, he's doing what he can to keep the walkers off them.   
  
T-Dog has the door so Daryl kneels down, rips at Hershel's pant leg. Maybe it's not so bad, maybe it's just broken, maybe the walker wrenched it and he - but of course there it is, a bite, a chunk gone, and Daryl wants to scream.   
  
There's a familiar sound that makes Daryl whip around, even now, even here, with Hershel bit right in front of them. Rick is unbuckling his belt.   
  
And then Daryl understands why. He holds Hershel down, feels as Hershel beats against his back, weak, not because he wants to be let go but because there's nothing else he can do. "Only one way to keep you alive," Rick says and in that moment Daryl is grateful, so grateful, that Rick is even considering it, that Rick was thinking fast enough to even guess at a way to save Hershel - 

Then Rick beats down with the axe and Hershel passes out and it's quiet. 

"He's bleeding out," Rick says, and Daryl looks at him and remembers his father. Fire, they need flame, if they cauterize it, if they -

But then there's the rattle of bars, the shuffling of steps, and Daryl says "Duck." And Rick ducks, instantly, not even hesitating, and Daryl lifts his bow - 

And discovers they are not alone in the prison. 

"Holy shit," one of the prisoners says.   
  
Yeah. Holy shit.


	3. Sick

"Who the hell are you?" Daryl barks, not lowering the bow.   
  
"Who the hell are you?" one of the men shoots back. 

"He's bleeding out," Rick says again. "We gotta go back! Come around here, put pressure on his knee, hard! Hard, push! Push!"  
  
Daryl can't see who he's talking to because he doesn't take his eyes off the men. "Come on out of here. Slow and steady."  
  
They come out, warily. One of them seems skeptical of him, of the bow, but Daryl doesn't lower it and he comes.   
  
"What happened to him?" one of them asks. His hair is long and he's got a layer of grime on him. They're all staring at Hershel, at his bloody stump, staring at Rick and them like they're monsters.   
  
"Got bit," Daryl says so they'll understand at least that they didn't - they wouldn't do that to Hershel if he didn't need it, if he didn't - 

"Bit?" The man says. T-Dog has his gun trained on them too and suddenly the man notices it and pulls a gun out of his own waistband, raises it - 

"Whoa whoa whoa, easy now," Daryl says, holding the bow at the ready. "Nobody needs to get hurt."   
  
Hershel's already hurt enough for all of them. 

"You have medical supplies?" Glenn asks, pushing past them.

"Who the hell are you people anyway?" the man with the gun says, and one with a stupid looking mustache goes "Sure don't look like no rescue team."  
  
"If a rescue team is what you're waiting for, don't," Rick shouts, and then Glenn is rolling something their way and Hershel is getting loaded up and Daryl doesn't take his eyes off the prisoners. One wrong move from the guy with the gun and he'll nail him, right between the eyes, like a walker -

"Daryl! Daryl!"  
  
And he backs away, the guy with the gun and him still matching each other, until he's in the hallway and they're running Hershel back. He's in front where he should be, taking out walkers left and right, and not letting himself think about Hershel behind him, about Maggie's frantic whispers of "It's all right Daddy, I've got you, it's all right -"

And then the prisoners are following them, he hears them, the guy with the long hair and the gun in front, and they speed up.   
  
"Open the door," Rick is yelling as they get closer. "Open the door, it's Hershel! Carl!"  
  
Carl is right there, the last man standing, and Rick doesn't even have to slow the cart down as they roll in the cell block and close the door behind them.   
  
Daryl is breathing fast and he and T-Dog are behind. He can hear the bustle in the block, Beth saying "Is he gonna die?" Carl taking the stairs fast, three at a time, running for something. He makes himself stop listening, loads up his bow. Puts the keys, the keys Hershel gave him, down on the table, and waits.   
  
They don't have to wait long. 

"S'far enough," he grunts. He looks at them and he can't tell what to think. They're in prison, they're in the safe space they're going to make, they're prisoners, bad guys, he'll do what he has to - 

But he thinks of Merle, too, whose been locked up more than he's been out, and he hesitates to kill them straight off. He will if he has to. But not yet.   
  
"Cell block C. Cell four. That's mine, gringo." The guy with the gun is walking towards him and Daryl takes his aim. "Let me in."

"S'your lucky day," he mumbles. "Y'all been pardoned by the state of Georgia. You're free to go."  
  
"Man, it's a kid," one of them says. The black guy, the little one. "Just -"  
  
"Ain't no kid," he says, and he nods towards the door. "See any arrows back there?"   
  
The guy looks uneasy. So they did. Lotta walkers back there baring Daryl's mark. Enough to convince them they can't just fuck with him.   
  
"What you got going on in there?" the guy with the gun says.   
  
"Ain't none of your concern."  
  
"Don't me telling me what's my concern, boy," the guy says, grabbing at the gun, and Daryl takes his stance, ready. 

"Chill, man," says the biggest guy there. "Dudes leg is messed up. Besides, we're free now. Why are we still in here?"  
  
"'S'got a point," Daryl says, one eye on the big guy in case it's a trick, a distraction. He keeps the rest of his attention on the dude with the gun. 

"Yeah, and I gotta check on my old lady," one of the others says.   
  
"A group of civilians, breaking into a prison you got no business being in - got me thinking there ain't no place for us to go."  
  
"Whyn't you go find out," Daryl says.   
  
"Maybe we'll just be going now," says the guy with the stupid facial hair.   
  
"Man, we ain't leaving," the guy with the gun says, and T-Dog must have gotten tired of waiting, because he steps out.   
  
"You ain't coming in either!" He's got his gun raised and him and the prisoner look eye to eye.

"This is my house, my rules, I go where I damn well please!" the prisoner fires back, and he sounds a lot like Will Dixon. 

Then everyone's raising their voices, the temperature rising, and Rick better come soon or Daryl will have to shoot those guys. No choice.   
  
"Better go back where you came from," Daryl yells. "Fore we make you."  
  
"Yeah? How you gonna make me, fucking kid playing cowboys and Indians -"  
  
"You wanna play? Les' go." Daryl brandishes the bow. 

"Why don't you go play man - shit, fucking ten year old child, go play in a sandbox, niño -"

"There ain't nothin' for you here, whyn't you go back to your own sandbox, pound dirt!" 

Then Rick is there - cop voice on, but it's different than all those months ago in Atlanta. There's iron in it now. And these guys don't know anything. Ten months, knowing nothing. Rick tries to explain it to them but it's like they have no frame of reference - they don't understand. Daryl wonders if he would, if he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, if he hadn't lived it. They don't get it.   
  
"Ain't no way," the guy with the gun says. But he doesn't seem as sure.   
  
"See for yourself," Rick says. And they do. 

The guy with the gun is trouble. He and Rick are facing off and Daryl doesn't take his grip off the bow, his eyes off the gun. 

But Rick makes a deal somehow. A deal with food. Daryl feels his stomach tighten. 

He's hungry. But he doesn't think this'll turn out well.

* * *

If that's what they think is a little food, Daryl doesn't want to know how much they started with. 

They load up - Rick's got the gun guy, Tomas, doing what he says for now, but Daryl watches him. He knows guys like Tomas. They're Merle's friends, his dad's drinking buddies. They do what they want and if you don't let them, they make you, with fists, with knives, with guns. Not with words. 

When they get back with the food, everyone looks torn between joy at the sight of more food than they've seen since the farm and terror, grief - Hershel lays limp on one bed, and Carol has blood up to her elbows.   
  
They trade the prisoners weapons and Daryl wonders why - they should just give them guns, let them blow out some brains, then get overrun. Have the walkers do their dirty work. But you can't use walkers, they've learned that by now. You try, they can turn on you.

And they don't have enough ammo to spare.

Daryl even tells them about the noise, about the head, and Tomas looks at him and spits. 

When Big Tiny goes down, Tomas a dangerous blot in his vision, spattered with blood, he falls in line with Rick. 

"You see his face?" he whispers. Rick looks at him.   
  
"He makes one move," Rick says, and he stops. Looks at Daryl. These moments have come farther and farther apart, but somehow they always come. The memory that Daryl's a kid. That he's asking a kid to do murder.   
  
"Just give me the signal," Daryl replies. And Rick swallows. And nods. 

It doesn't take long for Tomas to make a move. Swings his knife too close, shoves that walker at Rick - he can't even wait half a day, means he's too dangerous to keep around longer. Daryl shoves his way through, past Tomas, watching eagerly, and plants a knife through the walkers brain. Helps Rick up. 

Knows what's coming next. And it comes. 

The others aren't like that. He looks at them, at the big one on his knees, hands up, resigned. Rick comes back. "Daryl, let's end this now." And he'll do it, if he has to. He'll do what Rick says.   
  
He just doesn't know if they have to.   
  
The one with the dumb facial hair is blubbering like a baby. "I like my pharmaceuticals, but I'm no killer!"  
  
He's like one of Merle's clients, pathetic, snivelly. Probably a jerk when he's high, most people are. But he's a person too. And it's hard to see that, to see Oscar, dignified on his knees, and not think about Merle. 

And Rick relents. And Daryl is grateful. And they keep moving. 

When they get to D Block, finally, it isn't like C. The prisoners didn't starve to death.   
  
Daryl's not sure if that's mercy. 

He bites his thumb as he leaves. "Sorry about your friends, man," he says. 

He follows Rick. And when they get back, Hershel is still alive.   
  
That's enough good for one day.


	4. The Killer Within

The first week at the prison is, in some ways, quiet after their explosive entrance. It's like everyone is tethered to the cell block by Hershel's leg, by Lori's enormous stomach. Carol calls it house cleaning. They organize food, clean out cells, make it home, piece by piece. They clear the field, check the fence, and try to remember how to build a life. 

Carol is worried. He can tell. She keeps one eye on Lori all the time, when she isn't with Hershel. She looks at the book they found in the library in Greenville (Myles Textbook for Midwives, 13th Edition) and looks at Lori and worries. He doesn't know how to help. He'd worked with her a couple times, biting his thumb and quizzing her from the book by firelight on the road, but he isn't the most useful study partner. He reads slow - the words in the book are tiny and close set, sometimes made of letters that string together and make no sense to him. The pictures and the diagrams make him blush and it's hard to read for too long - there is so much that can wrong. But Carol is determined, lips set, and she reads and he'll quiz her whenever she asks, although she hasn't asked for a while. 

She starts asking again after Hershel loses his leg. She'll come and sit with him on his perch, legs dangling over the side, and he'll speak in a low voice as he asks her what to do for perinatal asphyxia, shoulder dystocia, perineal tears, fetal distress. Sometimes she knows the answer. 

Sometimes she doesn't. 

Hershel is up more now. Up as in awake, not up as in walking. He lays in his bed and Beth stays with him, holding his hand, singing to him. When Daryl walks past, Hershel calls out to him, and he'll stop and chat, trying not to look at the wall the blanket falls abruptly where his foot is gone. He tries not to think about what it means that Hershel - Hershel who is old, who lost half his leg - lived, what that might mean for his dad. He doesn't think about Will as much as he used to - no point to it. At this point, they've seen enough walkers and dead bodies for the idea that Will is alive has felt more and more like a dream. But seeing it now, seeing something worse, they hadn't even cauterized it - and Hershel lived. 

That means Will might be alive somewhere too, and Daryl doesn't want to think about what that means.  
  
After a few days, finally make their way outside - everyone has been waiting for Lori to pop, but Lori isn't popping and the longer they wait, the worse the walker corpses will get, out there baking in the Georgia sun. Hershel is better too - he's awake almost all the time, and talking, and it seems like people decide they can relax a little.   
  
Which Daryl should have known was a bad idea.

They start moving the cars in, figuring out where to put them - the near the doors plan worked pretty well at the farm, so they're trying to build on that, see if there's anything could work better. 

That's where they are when the convicts come.  
  
It's Axel - whiny Axel - who speaks their peace. Oscar just stands behind him, looking like he's trying not to cross his arms, trying not to challenge them.   
  
"You gotta understand! We can’t live in that place another minute, you follow me? All the bodies, people we knew! Blood, brains everywhere! There’s ghosts!"  
  
Of course there are ghosts, if they don't clean house.   
  
"Why don't you move the bodies out?" Daryl asks. If they're too dumb to figure that out - 

"You should be burning them."  
  
"We did! We tried!"   
  
That's bad news - a wall down. Not the worst news - their side of the prison is secure, but a gap anywhere makes Daryl chew at his thumb and think. They're so far from being able to clear the rest of the prison - how can they move that far out when any minute they step outside, they don't know if Lori's going into labor, if Hershel has taken a turn for the worse? But they have more than enough room, for now. And their side is secure. So, it's good. It's good enough.   
  
But it means the prisoners want out. And that's something Rick won't do.   
  
He watches Oscar. Merle would knock his block off if he ever compared Merle and Oscar - "I look like a big black bastard to you, Darylina?" - and Oscar is serious, surly, not like Merle with the jokes and the too loud laughter. Merle got all the words and Daryl got none, and Daryl doesn't necessarily mind that. It's something about the way that Oscar won't kneel, won't beg, won't surrender.   
  
Merle is like that too.   
  
They huddle behind the prison van as they try to decide what to do, even though to Daryl it seems like they've already decided. They wouldn't lock them outside the gates if they were going to let them stay. T-Dog disagrees, seems uncomfortable. Daryl wonders if T-Dog knows somebody like Merle - well, not like Merle, because Merle would kick the shit out of T-Dog for a Saturday night. But Daryl wonders if T-Dog has someone locked up to and that's what makes him look at the prisoners like they might be real people.   
  
"After all we've been through?" Carol says. "We fought so hard for all this. What if they decide to take it?"  
  
He looks at Carol, no sympathy on her face. And he agrees with her. He knows guys like this - degenerates, not psychos. Merle is a guy like this, or at least Daryl thinks he is - but he's seen Merle in a fight, seen him stab a guy in the head with a broken bottle, seen him headbutt a cop, and he wonders which side of that coin Merle's face lies.

"My brother's a guy like this," he says, and everyone turns to him. He doesn't talk about Merle - he'd come up, sure, once or twice over the long winter, but after Daryl called T-Dog a fucking dickhead and almost punched him when he'd asked about him, everyone had learned not to bring Merle up. "I mean, most people are. Grew up with people like that. They're degenerates, they ain't psychos." I could have been them, Daryl almost says. If Merle had been around a little longer and gotten Daryl in a little more trouble, he would have been them. But even though he's pretty sure the group likes him okay now, he doesn't want to test the luck of a former cop by telling him if the world hadn't ended, they'd probably be sitting on different sides of a police grill.   
  
"So you with me?" T-Dog asks, and Daryl looks at him surprised.   
  
"Hell naw!" he says. If Merle wasn't his brother, he wouldn't let Merle anyplace he wanted the medicine cabinets unraided, the booze cart untouched. He thinks about his dad, his dad's friends, Merle's friends. A fair amount of psychos mixed in with the degenerates, and mostly you couldn't tell them apart until it was too late. "Let 'em take their chances out of the road, like we did." That's fair, Daryl thinks. Why should they get easy what was, for the group, so hard? Let them earn a place somewhere, let them fight for it. Oscar will fight, Daryl knows. That's what Oscar's do.   
  
"What I'm saying, Daryl," T-Dog starts, and Daryl braces himself for another lecture about morality and responsibility, probably cribbed from his minister father and delivered to Daryl and Carl whenever T-Dog thinks they're getting a little jaded. Which probably just makes them more jaded.   
  
Rick tells some story about being a cop, about a boy who killed, and Daryl remembers that even before the world ended, there was never any shortage of monsters.

At least with walkers, he thinks, you can see what they are, on the outside. With humans, you can never tell until it's too late. 

* * *

They finish moving the cars, arrange them how Rick wants. He's going to give the prisoners a weeks worth of food - Daryl remembers Carol, the last night on the farm, packing supplies for Randall. Hopes this ends better than that.   
  
He goes to get the Husky - it's parked near the guard booth, and Oscar is there, leaning against the wall, Axel next to him.   
  
"Hey man, nice bike! That a Husky?"  
  
Daryl doesn't look at him. "Don' even look at it," he grunts. He doesn't want this guy, this sad pathetic tweaker, who seems like he's hopped up on something even though he must have been clean at least as long as he was locked in that cafeteria, Daryl doesn't want this guy looking at him, or talking to him. Daryl doesn't want to think about him. 

"Yeah, my nephew had one a them - nice bikes. Two stroke, right? Sounds like it could use a tune up - I'm pretty handy with the grind! Heads are leakin'! I know my bikes!"  
  
Daryl rides it up the hill and doesn't look back. 

It's only a few hours work but already the place looks better. Cleaner, brighter. They're stacking corpses and talking about the future - going on runs, planting crops. Like they'll be here a while. Daryl likes the feeling - like they're building something that'll last.   
  
He looks up and sees Hershel standing Lori and Carl and Beth surrounding him as he wobbles determinedly down the stairs. The old man is fucking tough. Up and about less than a week after having his fucking leg chopped off. Somehow, it's working out. Daryl can hardly believe it. Somehow, maybe, everything is going to be okay.   
  
"Looky here," he says to Glenn, and Glenn whoops.   
  
"All right, Hershel!"  
  
"Shh," Daryl says quick. "Keep your voice down." He points to the walkers, emerging from the woods.   
  
"Aw man," Glenn says, face falling. "Can't we just have one good day?"  
  
Daryl's not sure what Glenn is talking about. Hershel is walking. What would make the day better?  
  
Well. Nothing can make it better. But a lot can make it worse. 

Walkers make everything worse.   
  
Daryl and Rick are running but he's never seen Rick run like this before. He's seen Rick run a lot, a million ways, a million situations, but it's like he's barely touching the ground as he goes. Glenn's messing with the fence behind them but he has the keys, and he's so far back - it's like a game of hot potato, tossing the keys from Glenn to Daryl to Rick, and Daryl feels for a moment bizarrely like he's back in elementary school, playing a game. Except this isn't a game.   
  
Most everyone has cleared the yard by the time they get to the main gate - he thinks he sees Carol's headscarf peeking between walkers, and there are still guns going off, but he's too busy watching Rick fumble at the lock. Then they're through, running again, the prisoners gaping at them like they don't understand what's happening - they're under attack, is what's happening, they're not safe anymore, they're never safe - 

And then Carol is screaming "No!" and Daryl doesn't know why and he runs, runs, runs.

Rick is talking - Beth and Hershel are there, watching, Hershel balancing awkwardly, and Daryl doesn't have time to be glad as he aims and shoots, aims and shoots -

"T was bit," he hears Beth say, and he doesn't have time to be sad - aim and shoot, aim and shoot, his eyes roving, looking for Carol's headscarf -

"Anyone else?" Rick yells, and Daryl tries not to listen to the answer. Aim and shoot, aim and -

"I couldn't tell."

Then Rick is back with them and Glenn is talking sabotage and Rick looks murderous, like he's going to gut the prisoners right there, when all of a sudden there's a noise.   
  
An alarm.

Coming from the prison.   
  
"You gotta be kiddin' me!" Daryl yells, because how is this happening? How does this always fucking happen? Shooting out the speakers doesn't do shit and Rick's got the prisoners and they're running to the basement again, and Daryl can't help but think this whole thing is a trap. The noise is even happening inside, long and loud, reverberating through his whole body. A light flashes every so often, sometimes red, sometimes white, as if to say 'danger' - like Daryl needed some shitty light to tell him that, when there are walkers in their home and the alarm is calling more of them every second and they're all split up and he doesn't know where Carol is -  
  
They get to the cell block and no one is there. Not Maggie, not Lori, not Carl, not T-Dog. Not Carol. 

The prisoners are keeping up with them as they tear through the prisons, lights flickering on and off - generators, they could have done so much good with generators, but instead those generators might get them killed. Daryl is holding the door closed with Oscar and it keeps bucking open.   
  
"How d'you shut this down!?" Rick bellows over the rattle and wheeze of the generator, and then Oscar goes to Rick and Daryl is alone, holding the doors. He is growing but not that much - he's too small, he can tell, he's too weak, he's not strong enough to hold it all by himself.

And then from behind him he hears a yell, a thunk, a scuffle. He can't see what's happening because he can't let go of the damn door, but he hears himself, as if from a distance, yelling "Rick? Rick, fuck, Rick, what's happening, Rick -"  
  
He hears them yell, hears something skitter across the floor, metal, hears his own feet sliding - he can't hold it, it's too much, he's going to lose his grip and it'll spill open and they'll get overrun, again, fuck - 

He shoves into the door one more time and tries to slow his racing mind. Think, you stupid fuck, think - there's a way, there's always a way, if the circumstance ain't there you got to make it there, you got to make it fit, turn the odds to your favor, turn - 

So instead of holding the door, he gives way to the inevitable. He lets it open.   
  
He has one arrow loosed and buried in a walker's skull before the door is even halfway, and he stabs another a second after that. Then, gripping the edge of the door again, almost losing it in too slippery fingers, slamming it shut. He whips around but he can't see - the scuffle has died down behind him, he can't hear anything except - 

"Shoot him!"   
  
That's not Rick. It's one of the prisoners, the one Rick chased off, someone has a gun back there and it ain't Rick and if it ain't Rick.   
  
"We can take back this prison! Shoot him!"  
  
And as Daryl is trying to figure out what to do, how to keep the door shut and help Rick at the same time, when he hears the shot. 

His body moves faster than his brain - slamming into the door one last time, jamming his bow against the handle - his bow, if it's broken he'll - and he's sneaking around the side of the generator with his heart pounding. If it was Rick, if they got Rick, he's going to have to be fast, faster than he ever has been. Go for the one with the gun first, then the other person - the guy who was yelling for Rick to get shot. But go for the gun. He flexes his hand, knife clutched in it so tightly his knuckles are white, and he creeps around, not knowing what he's going to see.   
  
He's not expecting to see Andrew, blood leaking all over the floor. Or Rick, staring forward in disbelief. Or Oscar, handing the gun to Rick, handle first. 

He isn't expecting any of that. But considering what he was expecting to see, he'lll take it.   
  
And his bow is okay too. 

When the generators go down, it's weirdly quiet. Snarls echo the corridors but no voices. No alarms. Nothing. Almost like a ghost town. A prison of the dead. The lights have stopped flashing and it's back to navigating by flashlight. Daryl prefers that. At least with the flashlight, you know what to expect. They're going slow, taking out any walkers, and they find Glenn again.   
  
And then they find T-Dog. What's left.  
  
And next to that - Carol's head scarf. 

He made fun of her for wearing it. "Look like fuckin' Aunt Jemima," he said, and she'd given him a look.   
  
"Think before you speak," she said, and she looked at T-Dog over in the distance, and so did he. He frowned. He didn't even get what was so bad about that one. But he moved on.   
  
"Look like a fuckin' fake ass psychic. Gonna tell my fortune?"  
  
"You're the one who gave it to me. You want to blame me for wearing it, blame you for getting it."  
  
"Wouldn'a got it if I knew you was gonna wrap it 'round your head like a fuckin' cancer patient."  
  
"I like it. It's pretty."  
  
He'd scowled at that, and gone away. It'd made him uncomfortable to hear her talk about it. He'd only nabbed it from the counter of a drug store they'd raided where everything useful was gone. Two dollar head scarves and one dollar tubes of blowing bubbles were pretty much all that was left. It wasn't like he'd gone out of his way or anything. It wasn't like it was a present.   
  
It wasn't anything. Just a stupid scarf.   
  
Rick doesn't even really pause. He's too focused on finding Lori and Carl. Glenn too, he needs Maggie. The prisoners are tagging along but they don't understand. It's only Daryl, Daryl who tucks the scarf into his pocket, Daryl who, as they run, hears this in his head, beating along with his heart - 

_Carol's gone. She's gone. She's gone._

And then he finds out so is Lori. 

And when they find that out, so is Rick. 


	5. Say The Word

When he thinks about Lori is her trying to get him to do homework back at the Atlanta camp. Trying to get him to play with Carl, with Sophia. Being all up in his business all the damn time, not minding her own. Asking him, at the CDC, if he was okay, if Shane had - He remembers her toying with the hair at the nape of Carl's neck, her rubbing her swollen stomach, her and Carol laughing about some joke that went over his head.   
  
Carol he doesn't think about. He can't. Not yet.   
  
Rick is gone. He's kneeling on the floor in the courtyard and he won't respond to anyone, like he's in shock or something. Daryl tries to talk to him, but he doesn't answer. Maybe he'd answer Carl, Carl is his son, but Carl is gone too, in a way. He's holding his sister and looking at her like he's got the whole world cradled in a blue workshirt.   
  
"We got anything a baby can eat?" Daryl asks, and he hears how high his voice is. What do babies eat? Breast milk, duh, he knows that, he's not an idiot, but what do they drink when they can't get any? He's never seen a baby this new before, this close. She's wriggling and one fat pink foot keeps popping out of the shirt and she doesn't seem happy to be there.   
  
Yeah, he thinks. Join the club. 

"She needs formula, and soon, or she won't survive," Hershel says, and Daryl shakes his head.   
  
"Nope. No way. Not her," he says. "We ain't losing nobody else." Not after Lori, after T-Dog. After - "We gotta go for a run."  
  
He expects a fight - he goes on runs, of course, they all do, but normally they won't let him go alone. It's different in the woods - there, they seem to understand that he knows exactly what he's doing, that other people being there will actually make it harder for him to get anything good. But for runs, it's different. "It's not because you're a kid," Rick said impatiently after the fourth time they fought about it. "It's because no one goes out alone like that, when you're walking into something you don't have a read on. Safety in numbers. Only way we'll all make it."  
  
Safety in numbers. What a fucking joke. 

But Maggie is saying immediately "You can't go alone. I'll back you up," all signs of her tears gone except for the wobble in her voice. "I'll go too," Glenn adds. And that solves the problem of needing an escort. 

"Okay. Think where we're goin'," he says, and he bites his thumb. Grimaces when he tastes blood. He doesn't know whose it is. "Beth?" he asks, and she comes over right away. It's weird t be talking to her like this - she's two years older than him and normally she hangs back. Not that she doesn't pull her weight, but she does a lot of stuff he never sees because she does it when he's out hitting shit with a knife or a bow. But Beth is kind, Daryl knows. She's kind and he and her and Carl are the kids, the three of them, and that makes them a team sometimes against the grown ups. And looking at the grown ups who are left - Rick, on his knees on the ground, Hershel, leaning heavily on one crutch as he investigates the baby with his free hand, Glenn who is comforting Maggie, Maggie who seems almost in shock herself, her hands red to the wrist with blood. There's no grown up left who can do this. And he and Beth and Carl are a team.   
  
"Just lost his mom," Daryl mumbles. He remembers losing his own mother, the smell, the way she was - "His dad ain't - doin' so hot." He doesn't know how to ask it without it sounding fucking weak.   
  
And then he doesn't have to say anything. "I'll look after him," Beth says, and Daryl just nods.   
  
Rick isn't doing anything. He's just staring.   
  
It's easy to fall into mission mode. This is what Daryl is good at. He can count what he's good at on one hand and have enough fingers left to flip someone off. He can hunt, he can fight, he can strategize, he can work. Going on a run checks almost all these boxes. 

Rick has scooped up the axe and is booking it back to the prison. Fuck.   
  
"I - " he looks at Hershel. "What do we do?" he asks, and he finds his voice breaking almost. What do they do without Rick who made decisions?   
  
"Just what you're doing," Hershel says. He looks at Daryl. "Glenn and Maggie could go alone. You don't have to leave."  
  
But he does, he realizes in a second. He has to leave. He can't be here and watch Rick like that, vacant and crazy, he can't keep looking over his shoulder for Lori and T-Dog, for Carol - 

He can't. He just can't. He has to be out. He has to do some good, because otherwise he's done fuck all of use today and if he stays here he'll punch the wall of the cell block over and over until both his hands break, and his wrists. He'll punch himself to powder and he still won't be done.   
  
Hershel nods, even though Daryl didn't say anything. "We do what we have to do," Hershel said. "And we'll do it. All of us."  
  
And with that, they open the gate and hit the road, before they lose the light. 

* * *

It ends up being him and Maggie on the dirt bike ("We can't leave Beth and Carl and Dad and the baby with those guys, what if they - and Rick, Rick is in no shape to -" "I'll stay. I'll take care of them. I promise. I love you.") and Maggie almost smiles when she sees him on it.   
  
"You look like Shawn," she says softly, and slides on the back behind him. 

At the daycare, he hovers back. It's quiet there, in the middle of the woods, not a sound but leaves rustling and crickets and a bird. He doesn't hear anything coming from inside, and he hopes that's true.   
  
What happens to a walker whose a baby, he wonders. And then he makes himself stop wondering.   
  
He feels like a weak ass bitch when he lets Maggie go in first. When he goes in, the first thing he sees are the bloody handprints on the wall. How'd the kids get up so high? Then he sees green handprints mixed in, yellow, blue. They're made of paper. He feels stupid.   
  
Maggie's like a machine on runs - Daryl thinks she must have been pretty sneaky as a kid, because she always knows just the right places to look. Under beds, between mattress and box spring, on the back of the top shelf in a closet. It's not as hard here - who is gonna try and hide secret shit where they work? - but she's good at the other part of it too, of thinking where she'd put things if it were her, and most of the time she guesses right. So maybe it's not about being sneaky, maybe it's about thinking better than other people, about being able to feel like them. It's not a skill Daryl has so his method is much more slapdash - he opens every cabinet, every drawer, throws everything into the middle of the room, and figures it out from there. 

One of the handprints is little and pink and it says Sofie. He looks for a second, then scans the rest of the wall. There aren't any that say Carol. They move on. 

The whole place seems empty except for one cabinet door. Daryl and Maggie haven't been teamed up alone before, but they still know their jobs. Daryl's job is to be ready with the bow. Maggie's job is to open the door. He thinks his job might be easier. The scratching doesn't let up, and when Daryl shoots the possum, he grins around the flashlight.   
  
"Hello, dinner," he says, and he thinks at least everyone won't have to go hungry tonight on top of all the other shit.   
  
And Maggie finds the baby's dinner too. 

* * *

When they get back it's dark and for a moment, Daryl wonders how soon was soon. Are they too late? Is the baby already gone? Would they have had to put her down or - 

But she's crying when they hit the cell block, loud, and Daryl figures that's a pretty good sign.   
  
Carl is holding the baby still, and Daryl goes and sits next to him as Beth and Maggie pour over the formula. Carl looks up at Daryl, his face worried.   
  
"She won't stop crying. She -"  
  
"Think that's what babies do," Daryl mumbles, but he bites his thumb. Is it? Or does it mean there's something wrong, that they'll lose four people today instead of just three - 

And then the baby is wriggling and Carl is struggling to keep hold and somehow he hands the baby over to Daryl.   
  
Daryl's never held a baby before. He's seen other peoples, on the street, in a store. Heard them, sometimes, crying in cars or in back bedrooms while his dad did a deal with their moms. His third grade teacher had gone on maternity leave halfway through the year and had come back to show them the kid when she had it. Other kids had lined up, sat next to her, and she'd let them hold the baby - a boy, Daryl remembered. But that teacher was a nosy bitch before she left, always in his business, asking questions he didn't want to answer, and he skulked in the back of the class and watched her, her face soft whenever she looked at the fuzzy little bundle in her arms.   
  
She's warm, is the first thing Daryl notices. He thought it might be like holding a doll, a doll that moved, but she's warm and heavy in his arms, a comforting weight. "Shh," he says, and he finds himself moving back and forth - not rocking her, he's not a fucking pussy, but she shouldn't be crying so loud. Walkers could hear. So he finds himself shifting, back and forth, up and down, like if he just finds the right position she'll shut up.   
  
He looks up and Hershel is watching him, a small smile on his face. Carl is watching too.   
  
"Here," Beth says, and she shoves a bottle into his hand. He takes it awkwardly, then tries to hold it back.   
  
"Naw - you do it, I dunno -"  
  
"Baby does the hard work," Hershel says. "Let's not make her wait any longer. She's been patient enough."  
  
"Carl should -"  
  
"Feed her, Daryl," Carl says. It looks like it's the first thing he's said for a while.   
  
So he does. He remembers finding a kitten when he was eight - it had a busted up tail and cuts on it's face and he wondered at the time if Merle and his friends had found it first. It'd been small and mewling and he'd brought it home and tried to feed it. It cartoons cat's drank milk and ate fish, but they didn't have any fish and the milk was on the edge of going bad. He'd tried all night, using a spoon and a straw and his fingers, but he hadn't gotten far.   
  
And in the morning, his dad had found it. And that was the end of the kitten. 

Feeding the baby isn't like feeding the kitten. The baby wants to eat and the bottle fits into her mouth like a key. Hershel was right - she's doing all the hard work. She quiets immediately and then the only sound is her sucking, and Daryl finds himself smiling wider than he had in a long time.   
  
"She's - she's doing it," he whispers, afraid to speak too loud, to spook her. Hershel smiles.   
  
"She is. Prop her up a little higher - that's it. Well done."  
  
Carl is looking too, at the baby's face. He puts out a hand and touches one little foot - the baby has toenails, Daryl realizes, and fingernails, tiny and perfect. Carl's hand is grimy next to her brand new skin and Daryl watches as he runs one thumb down the sole of her foot, like he can't be out of contact with her.  
  
"She got a name yet?" he asks Carl, because he can't just keep calling her the baby in his head, babies need names.

Carl shakes his head a little. "Not yet." He looks at Daryl. "I was thinking - maybe Sophia."  
  
It's like a punch to the gut. Daryl looks at the baby, tries to see her as a Sophia. He can't. It's too big a name for such a little baby. It's so heavy.   
  
"Then there's - Carol, too."  
  
It's so heavy.   
  
"And - Andrea. Amy. Jacqui. Patricia. Or...Lori. I don't know."   
  
No one speaks. It's a graveyard in between them, ghosts hanging around every word, in the air they breathe. They've lost so much. Carl's broken contact, has turned away from the baby. He'd be turning to Rick, Daryl thinks, if Rick were here. But he ain't. And neither is Lori. So Carl is just turning away. The baby has lost so much.   
  
But the baby doesn't know it yet. The baby is greedily sucking down, chow time, and she squirms a little in his arms, grunts, and Daryl finds himself smiling. "You like that? Huh?" he asks. He doesn't know how you talk to a baby. Is it weird to talk to them like they can hear, they can answer? To ask them what they like? As if in answer, the baby squirms again. Her legs kick out, one, then another. "Little asskicker?" Then he looks up. Hershel doesn't love his cussing at the best of times, and maybe he isn't supposed to cuss near a baby.

But no one yells at him. In fact, there's a laugh - from Maggie, who looks so relieved, the tightness in her face from all through the run gone. The baby kicks again, more forcefully.   
  
"She likes that," Glenn says. He has a hand on Maggie's back, fingers curled around her waist, as they all watch.   
  
"Little asskicker," Carl says. He's back. He touches her foot again, gently, so carefully. Daryl remembers him, Lori pressing his hand to her stomach at one campfire or another, their faces lit with a warm glow. "Can you feel the baby kick?" Carl's face, squinting, and then, in one moment, delighted. Struck by tiny feet.   
  
The baby kicks again. She's a fucking fighter. She's gonna kick this world's ass.   
  
If they can keep her alive long enough to. 

* * *

The next day, he wakes up early, gets his bow. He hesitates for a second - he'd rather just slip out, but what if they wake up and he isn't there? What if they think he abandoned them? He thinks about waking Beth, but she's in with Hershel and Hershel would forbid him from leaving, and he doesn't want to risk it. The baby is in there too, curled up in a box, and Carl is sleeping on the floor next to the baby. So that's them out. The prisoners are in the cell block with them, but they've gotten the furthest cell they possibly could from the others.   
  
It's a shock when Daryl realizes that his only options left are Glenn and Maggie. 

He approaches warily - over the long winter, he'd caught Glenn and Maggie twice, and while he hadn't gotten whupped either time, the way his dad had when Daryl had seen him and one of his girlfriends fucking on the living room sofa, he wouldn't hold out luck for that always being true, especially now, when everything feels so wrong. He gets there, steeling himself for a quick retreat - they were naked or fucking, he'd just go, and it'd be on them if he didn't tell anybody where he'd went - but they aren't. They're asleep, twined around each other in the bottom bunk, Maggie's head tucked under Glenn's chin, Glenn's arms wrapped around her, protecting her.   
  
He wishes Glenn were on the outside, but he's not. It's Maggie. He likes Maggie fine - the long winter'd given them that much. But he doesn't know her as well as he knows Glenn. Glenn wouldn't say shit about Daryl leaving. Glenn'd understand.   
  
But if he reaches over Maggie to wake Glenn he'll probably wake Maggie anyway. So he reaches out, tentatively - he still doesn't really like touching other people, because it gives them the idea they can touch him back and they can't, nobody can. Carol - 

He pokes Maggie's arm, harder than he meant to, trying to shove the thoughts of Carol away.   
  
"Psst," he hisses, and Maggie is awake immediately, eyes snapping open, hands scrabbling over the bed to her knife, hanging from the frame.   
  
"What is it? Walkers -"  
  
"Naw, nothin', just -" This was fucking stupid. He could have been out and back by now. Being with these people all winter has made him fucking soft. He'd disappear for days at a time with his dad - nine days was the record, but he'd regularly go two or three without seeing his dad in summer, and Merle'd drop in and out whenever he felt like it. He didn't owe these people shit and Maggie was gonna be pissed she'd woken him.   
  
"Daryl?" she whispers. "What's wrong? The baby -"  
  
"Nothin'," he says quick. "Really, nothin', just. 'M goin' out." He feels dumb saying it, and he shifts. "Jus' wanted to tell you."  
  
Glenn is still sleeping, a line of drool going down one cheek to the pillow. After the whole winter, how can Glenn sleep like that?  
  
"Out where? You can't do a run alone. Let me wake Dad and tell him -"  
  
"Naw, not - I just gotta get somethin'. Righ' outside the fence. I just - I'unno. Thought I'd tell you."   
  
Maggie blinks at him. "Get what?"  
  
He scowls. "A fuckin' flower, a'right?"  
  
Maggie's confusion softens into something like pity and Daryl feels his gut clench. Over the winter the pitying looks had gotten fewer and fewer - Carol never looked at him like that, or Hershel, and there'd been enough other stuff to worry about. He hates this look, he hates it, the way it assumes something about it, the way it thinks it knows. It doesn't know shit. 

"All right," Maggie says slowly. "Thanks for telling me. Do you want - I could come cover you, if you -"  
  
"Naw," he says again, and he's up and out of the cell before he finishes talking. "Kin do it myself."  
  
The flowers aren't far - he saw them growing at the edge of the creek, when he was getting water with T-Dog the other day. A good sign, he thought. But maybe he should stop looking for signs. They never mean what he thinks they do.   
  
He's over and back before the walkers even notice he's out. He checks the fence three times - ain't no way he's gonna be the one who lets walkers in, after everything. Then, he goes to the graves.   
  
They'd done a good job. The graves are neat and even, the dirt smooth. Each one has a letter in stones piled on the dirt. L, TD, C.   
  
He kneels at the C one and gently, so gently, puts down the flower. 

Cherokee rose.   
  
You're meant to say things at graves, he thinks - he remembers Otis's pile of rocks, Rick's impassioned speech over Dale. They didn't say anything for Jacqui, though maybe that was because they'd been running from a fucking inferno. Or Andrea, but Andrea didn't have a grave. Daryl thinks and thinks and feels himself getting angry - he's so fucking stupid he can't say two words for a woman who was good to him, a woman who'd cared about him.   
  
In the end, he just leaves the flower. Touches the cross. Maybe she's with Sophia, a voice says in his head, but that's Carol's voice, not his. He doesn't believe in heaven or hell or any of that shit. When you die, you're just dead. You get eaten or you rot but you're gone, that's it, the end. Darkness and dirt, that's fucking all.   
  
If there were a heaven though, Carol and Sophia would be there. They'd be together.   
  
They'd be happy. 

And Daryl wishes he could believe that as he brushes angrily at his face and goes back inside. 

No one has noticed he was gone. 


	6. Hounded

The next morning at breakfast - weird prison oatmeal, Daryl perched on the steps shoveling it in. Merle said the food in prison was shit, but Merle hadn't spent nine months in the end of the world. Daryl will take prison oatmeal over nothing any day. Beth has the little asskicker in her arms. She's wearing a pink baby outfit - "It's called a onesie," Beth said, smile quirking one side of her mouth. Carl's wearing a shirt he had last summer at the Atlanta camp - the sleeves are too tight and it rides up sometimes. They're growing, him and Carl, Beth too. Hershel's got his hair tied back in a little ponytail and he's sitting at the table like head of the fucking house. Like he's gonna lead them in a prayer or some shit. Daryl likes Hershel but the table isn't big enough for all of them anyway, so he sits on the steps instead.   
  
To his surprise, Oscar stands next to him. For a second, Daryl tenses - Oscar is big and up til yesterday, it wasn't like they'd exactly been making friends. The prisoners are in now, for better or for worse, and Daryl just hopes that they stay as helpful as they've been so far. Oscar doesn't say anything though. He just nods at Daryl. Eats his oatmeal.   
  
And then Rick is back and Daryl feels a knot in his stomach he wasn't even aware of loosen. Rick looks better - he's changed since the fight, he's out of his bloody shirt, and he's washed his face and his hair is combed back. He's back, Daryl thinks, he had to take a day to go crazy, that's all right. Daryl wishes he could have gone crazy yesterday, but there'd been too much to do. But Rick took the day and went crazy and now he's back and they'll figure out how to keep moving forward.   
  
"Everybody okay?"  
  
No one gets up - it's like they're afraid Rick will spook or something. "Yeah, we are," Maggie says. She too is unfolding - like Rick being back means that it's not her fault, like the fact that she couldn't save Lori isn't going to ruin the whole group -  
  
"What about you?" Hershel asks. His gaze is level, and his tone is guarded. It's like he's withholding relief and that makes Daryl tense up again. Hershel's a drunk, he remembers. Or, whatever, ex-drunk. He knows about slipping off the wagon. And he doesn't look convinced that Rick's back on the sane wagon yet.   
  
"I cleared out the boiler block," Rick says. He's standing next to Carl, looking down, but Carl doesn't get up. Just looks at Rick. And Rick doesn't bend down.   
  
And he doesn't look at the little asskicker.  
  
"How many were there?" Daryl asks. The boiler block - gotta be at least a dozen walkers, maybe twenty, did Rick - 

"I don't know. A dozen, two dozen." Daryl's seen Rick in a frenzy before and there's a shiver at his back. Rick in the boiler block, face a rictus of rage, swinging and swinging until everything is dead - 

"I have to get back. Just wanted to check on Carl." He pats Carl awkwardly on the back and Carl doesn't do anything. Doesn't say anything.   
  
What about the little asskicker?  
  
"Rick, we can handle taking out the bodies," Glenn says, "You don't have to -"

"No, I do," Rick says, and his face is hard. Rick isn't back. Not yet. 

And then he's walking over to Daryl, eyes weirdly intense, and Daryl feels himself tense up. He hasn't felt this for a while - this automatic urge to shrink, to hide, to brace himself. He hadn't thought he'd relaxed his guard at all, had thought he'd been ready for any of them to turn on him at any second, but he guesses he had, somewhere, without noticing. Because now it's back, that creeping dread in his stomach, that feeling of some guy coming towards you with a look in his eyes you can't read and heavy fists and anger thrumming under his skin -

"Everybody got a gun and a knife?" he asks, and Daryl wonders why Rick is asking him, instead of Hershel or Glenn. Why is Rick talking to Daryl at all, when he should be talking to Carl. Daryl nods, his throat weirdly thick. Fucking stupid, getting scared now, never got scared before, got fucking weak on the road, got - 

"Of course. We're running low on ammo, though," Hershel says.   
  
"Maggie and me were planning on making a run this afternoon. Found a phone book with some places we can hit for bullets and formula." Daryl wonders if Glenn says formula on purpose, trying to get Rick to look at Beth, at the little pink bundle in Beth's arms.  
  
"Cleared out the gen'rator room," Daryl mumbles, and he almost flinches when Rick looks at him. Stupid, fucking stupid, what's wrong with him, fucking pussy - "Axel's there, trying to fix it. Case a emergencies." Rick doesn't nod or anything, doesn't say anything about Axel. Just keeps looking at Daryl. Daryl keeps talking. "We're gon' sweep the lower level, 's'well." He doesn't know what he wants - approval? For Rick to join in, for Rick to make the plan? It's like he's trying to prompt Rick into figuring out how to be the leader again. But Rick doesn't give him anything. He nods, once, and is making his way back to the door, angry fast strides, slamming the metal bars behind him.   
  
"Rick!" Glenn yells after him, and Daryl doesn't know whether or not to be glad when Rick ignores him and keeps going. 

* * *

Maggie and Glenn prep for the run and Beth cradles the baby. She seems lost too - the little asskicker is asleep but Beth keeps looking down, adjusting her hold. She's got a tank top on and she presses the baby to her skin. She seems embarrassed when she notices Daryl watching her, but he doesn't get why - it's not like she's showing anything they haven't all seen.   
  
"It's - supposed to be good. For the baby. Skin to skin, it - helps them adjust. To the world outside. Regulates their heartbeat and stuff. Lori said -" But then Beth is biting her lip, shaking her head.   
  
"'S'good," he mumbles. "Doin' right by the 'kicker." That gets him a small smile, and Beth adjusts her hold somewhat, getting the baby even closer.   
  
He offers to go on the run, but Glenn turns him down. "These guys are all right," he says to Daryl, looking over at Oscar, who is cleaning out the cell he's claimed. "We don't - I can watch Maggie on the run, and you guys will be all right here." He pauses. "Keep an eye out. That's all. We'll be back soon."  
  
Daryl isn't sure what he's meant to be keeping an eye on - the prisoners? The baby? Carl? Rick? - but he nods and Maggie and Glenn head out. Hershel does too, hobbling along on his crutches. He's going to look for Rick, Daryl bets, and he hopes that goes okay. Rick is strong and mad and fast and Hershel is old and on one fucking leg - but Hershel is a tough sumbitch. He can take care of himself.  
  
Carl is sitting next to Beth. He's not even blushing at the fact that he's sitting next to Beth in a tank top, which shows he's in some kinda mood. Daryl sits down next to them, and the kids watch the baby kick one fat foot.   
  
"She does that a lot," Carl says. "Maybe we really should name her little asskicker."  
  
" 'S'good name," Daryl mutters. Beth smiles.   
  
"That'll go over real well at school. Asskicker Grimes!"  
  
"Don' think that'll be 'zactly a problem," Daryl points out, and Beth's smile fades a little. Daryl could kick himself.   
  
"Yeah. Right." Carl is holding the baby's hand gently between his thumb and his pointer finger. The baby's fingers twitch. Grip. Carl's eyes widen. "She's strong."  
  
"Well, yeah," Daryl says. "Fuckin' gotta be, right?"  
  
"Yeah," Carl says. The baby's grip doesn't loosen. "Yeah. She does."  
  
They all look at the baby. Her eyes are open - they're big and blue and staring right at Daryl.   
  
They look like Sophia's eyes, like Carol's, and then Daryl can't be there anymore. He just can't. He's up and grabbing his bow.   
  
"Where are you going?"  
  
"Lower level," he grunts. "Said I'd sweep it out."  
  
"I'll come too," Carl says, and he's got his gun and his hat before Daryl can object, not that he's going to. Fucking stupid to go anywhere without backup.   
  
Oscar is standing outside his cell, his eyes on them, pensive. Maybe he looks at them and sees two kids going off by themselves, because he says "I'll come too. Nothing else to do."  
  
And Daryl thinks about Merle and agrees. 

* * *

There's not much down in the lower level - not much of a need to sweep. They got most everything yesterday. Something scrabbles, weakly, at a door, the solitary confinement cell but they keep moving. It's not going anywhere. Oscar turns a corner and Carl isn't keeping up. Carl looks blank, shut down. And before Daryl knows what he's doing, he's fallen in step with the younger boy. 

He doesn't talk about his family. Will never comes up anymore - Daryl doesn't mention the fact that they left his dad for dead on a fucking roof, and the others don't mention that Will didn't come back for him. Merle he mentioned once or twice, but if they pushed too far he'd lose it, so they stopped pushing. He's sure they assume he has a mother - that maybe she died in the early days of the outbreak, that maybe she'd left Will a long fucking time ago. But he's never mentioned her. Until now.   
  
"You know, my mom?" he says, and Carl looks at him, and his face doesn't look like he's about to clock Daryl for mentioning his mom, so Daryl keeps going. "She liked her wine. She liked to smoke in bed. Virginia Slims." He thinks about other things - the feel of her hair tickling his cheek when she tucked him in, how she'd sung to him, sometimes, when she was drunk and when she wasn't. She'd cut his and Merle's hair in the backyard, like Lori used to cut Carl's. She'd fight with his father, screaming matches, throwing dishes, and she'd end up with bruises and she'd go to her wine and her cigarettes and her solitaire in the kitchen. Her smell.

But he can't tell Carl those things - they're private, personal, and Carl wouldn't want to hear them anyway. He keeps going. "Was playing out with the kids in the neighborhood. I c'd do that, with Merle gone." He can't remember anymore where Merle was - juvie? If so they'd let him out for the funeral. He guesses they would. Merle'd been fifteen and at fifteen Merle was already staying over at girl's places or drinking all night with his friends, so Merle could have been anywhere. "They had bikes, I din't." Carl probably had a bike, a bike with training wheels that his dad had taught him to ride, that his mom had run behind, hands on the seat, helping him balance, not letting him fall. "We heard sirens gettin' louder." They heard sirens often enough in their neighborhood - busting up domestic disputes, the occasional raid, an ambulance for someone who OD'ed. He keeps going. It had always drawn them, like flies to honey. Something to see. Built in entertainment. "They all jumped on their bikes, went towards it, you know, hopin' to see somethin' worth seein'." He was five, his legs burning as he tried to keep up, as he yelled for them to wait. "I ran after them but, y'know, couldn' keep up. Ran around a corner an' - saw my friends lookin' at me. Hell, saw everybody lookin' at me." They had all been - a line of kids on bikes, adults from the neighboring house, all of them staring, and Daryl had realized he was the thing to see. He was the entertainment. He hated people looking at him, always, and in this moment he wonders if this is where that came from. "Fire trucks everywhere. People from the neighborhood." They'd left the neighborhood after that, gone to the cabin, where everything had always been worse. No more neighbors up there, just trees and booze and his dad. "It was my house they were there for."  
  
And the rest of it somehow comes up easy. "It was my mom, in bed. Burnt down to nothin'." She was resting that day because his dad'd been at her hard the night before. He remembers, in a flash, her face, puffy and bruised when he went to see her that morning, her throwing a book at him when he opened the door. Get out, get out! The last he'd seen her before she became nothing but ashes. "That was the hard part. You know, she w's jus' gone." Gone. Like Carol, he thinks, a sudden spear through his heart. No body for her neither. Nothing left. "Erased. Nothing left." Nothing. "People said it was better that way." His Grandma Patsy, his grandpa - "I'unno. Jus' made it seem like it wadn't real, you know?"  
  
And finally Carl speaks. "I shot my mom," he says. "She was out. Hadn't turned yet. I ended it." He looks at Daryl. "It was real."  
  
And it doesn't feel like Carl's shutting him down, or fighting with him, it doesn't feel like Carl is saying one is worse or nothing - it's like Carl knows what it means for Daryl to have said all that. It's more he's ever said at one time to anybody in the group, he realizes suddenly. Carl knows that. And so Carl gives him something in return. He gives him the truth.   
  
Daryl just nods.   
  
"Sorry about your mom," Carl says. And Daryl turns, scowls, twists his mouth. She's been dead a long time, almost ten years. She's a pile of ashes in a shoebox in a closet he'll never go back to. Don't matter no more. Carl's the one whose hurting. He looks at Carl and makes himself keep looking until Carl makes eye contact - something Daryl isn't great at in the best of times.   
  
"Sorry about yours," he says forcefully. Because Lori was a good mom. She'd loved Carl, she'd tried to keep him safe, she'd died being a mom.   
  
Daryl's mother wasn't a good mother, probably. Good moms don't pass out with a cigarette in bed at three in the afternoon, don't stay where their kids are in danger. She wasn't as good as Lori, that's for sure. But she was his.   
  
For five years, she was his. At least Carl got more than that.   
  
He almost wants to reach out, to touch Carl, to give him something. A hand on the shoulder like Carol used to do with him sometimes. A sign that someone was there, even if Rick was losing his mind somewhere else. But Daryl doesn't touch other people. He doesn't know how. So he just shrugs, adjusts the flashlight. Looks down the next hallway.   
  
"C'mon," he says. And they go.

* * *

They only find one more walker, and he's got a familiar knife stuck in his throat. 

Fuck. He cleans it off on the guys shirt, scowls. If he'd known this was the walker who killed Carol, he wouldn't have just put it down like that, so quick. He'd beat the shit out of it first, he'd take that knife out of the guys throat and shove it in his brain, for her, he'd - 

What if it's not the one who killed her?  
  
The others underestimate Carol. Even after a year on the road they look at her, the others from the camp especially, like she's some delicate fucking flower, like she's fragile, like she can't take care of herself. They think since she let Ed whale on her that she's weak, when Daryl knows it's the opposite. It means she's strong, she's tough, she can take anything.   
  
There's a weird feeling in his throat and he realizes he's breathing fast. He pushes it down. Stupid to get his hopes up. Stupid to think there's any chance. Every other time he's thought that he's been wrong and he's probably wrong this time too.   
  
But it means that somewhere down here, Carol might be hiding. One way or another. They made a pact, all of them, but especially him and her. If she's down here, if she's turned - 

That's his job. And he'll do it. He'll do it. 

Oscar and Carl head back up and Daryl's right behind them till the very end. "Solitary," he says suddenly, when the cellblock is in sight.   
  
"What about it? That last walker probably was in there the first time and - 

"I'll jus' check," he says, and he darts off before they can fight him. 

He gets down there, though, and he can't do it. He hears it, the weak thumps, the clang of the door, and he slams the knife against the ground and runs his hands through his hair and he can't do it. He had never thought, when he was looking for Sophia, about what he would do if he found her and she'd turned. He hadn't even let it be a possibility. He stabs the tip of the knife into the floor, tries to pretend it's Carol's head. Carl just shot his fucking mom in the head and he didn't hesitate. Carol isn't Daryl's mom. She's his friend, that's all, he should - he has to. He hears the door shove again, catching on the walker on the door. He has to. He has to.

For Carol.   
  
He paces up and down the hall, hits it, can hear his breathing quicken. He just has to psych himself up. Don't be a fucking pussy, don't be weak, he can do this, he has to - he didn't fucking find her, he didn't find Sophia, he let Rick shoot Sophia in the head, he can't let her down on this. They made a pact.   
  
He'd promised her.   
  
The door is open and his hand is halfway to her skull before he sees her eyes open.   
  
He can't say anything. It's not real. She's bit, she's bit and she tucked herself away in here to die - but her forehead is cool when he touches and he doesn't see any wounds.   
  
"Daryl," she says. And he almost loses it.   
  
He scoops her up as best he can - he's tall enough and strong but not that strong, and she's taller than him by some so it's hard to hold her. He's practically dragging her, and she's clinging to him, tight around his neck, trying to keep up. Every so often he'll be able to lift her for a minute, but then he has to put her down again. She's there, a weight against his arms, warm against his side. She's there.   
  
She's there. 


	7. When The Dead Come Knocking

He gets Carol back to the cell block, settles her in. She really seems all right - he checks her over just in case, but no bites, no scratches. Blood, but ain't none of it hers. She smiles at him as he checks, leans back weakly. She just seems exhausted, dehydrated, tired - she must have fought off more than just that one, to get herself safe into that cell. 

"I'm all right, mother," she says, but Daryl doesn't stop, doesn't even respond. Just keeps checking her over and over and over. 

"Gon' go find the others," he says brusquely. He does't know where they are, that they aren't in the cell block, but the next best guess is outside, so he'll start there. He gets her water, watches her for a moment. "Be righ' back. Don' move."

"I'm not going anywhere," she says, and he nods and starts out of the cell, quick - hearing a door open down the other end of the block. Voices. 

"I knew you'd come," he thinks he hears her say, but he's already walking to the others and he doesn't stop to have her say it again. 

"Rick!" he calls out, seeing Rick first, but then he remembers Rick this morning - the look in his eyes, the energy, and he wonders if he made a mistake. But Rick turns around and looks like Rick again. Daryl keeps his guard up though. He won't forget again, that people can turn mean. He won't drop his guard. 

Past Rick, on the floor, is a black women - torn up, long dreads. A fucking sword in Rick's hand. 

"The fuck's that?" Daryl asks, and Rick looks back at the woman and asks her name. 

She doesn't answer and Daryl doesn't have time for that shit. Who gives a fuck about some bloody stranger when Carol - 

"Y'all come on in here," he mumbles, looking at the others, at Rick. Maybe he should just say it, tell them, but he almost does't trust himself, doesn't trust the words. There aren't any big enough to explain what has happened, what he's found. "You're gonna wanna see this."

And they come. And awkwardly, almost shyly, he leads them to her. 

"Oh God. Thank God. Thank God."

"How?" Hershel is saying, and Carol half laughs, half chokes. 

"Solitary."

"Fuckin' fought her way into a cell," Daryl says. He bites his thumb. He's got to remember this, next time. He can't let them write Carol off like that, so swiftly. "Musta passed out. Dehydrated." 

Then Carol sees the baby and it's like no one else matters. There's no words for this either, the look on Carol's face - rapture, awe. Hope. Her eyes are full of tears and Daryl wonders if that's what it was like when she saw Sophia for the first time. Probably. But probably even more. Sophia was her daughter, after all. 

There's no words for the look on her face when she realizes Lori is gone, and she doesn't make anyone else say any either. Jus covers her mouth. He can see the guilt wash over her as she whispers, "I'm sorry."

She's got nothing to be sorry for. She practiced, night after night, reading that fucking book, riding in the car with Hershel so he could teach her, cutting open walkers for the c-section. She'd done all she could and it wasn't her fault it wasn't enough. It wasn't. 

As Carol takes the baby in rough, bloody hands, Daryl can see the stranger woman looking through the bars. 

Watching them. 

* * *

Rick questioning somebody is different than Shane doing it. But Rick is hard when he's doing it in a way that, after his manner from earlier, makes Daryl hold himself a little stiller than he normally wood. Bow at the ready. Glenn and Maggie are still gone, but Hershel comes too, balancing on his crutches like he's been doing it his whole life instead of three days.   
  
"You're gonna have to tell us how you found us. And why you were carrying formula."  
  
At that, Daryl looks at the red basket the woman'd had with her, and something sick starts to form in his stomach.   
  
"The supplies were dropped by a young Asian guy and a pretty girl."  
  
Hershel was resting on one of the tables but he's up again at that, his hands clenching over the rubber grips of his crutches. Dropped. Glenn doesn't drop stuff. He's quick and he's careful. He's the least clumsy person Daryl's ever met. He wouldn't drop - 

"They were taken."  
  
"By who?"  
  
"By the same son of a bitch who shot me."  
  
Fuck, fuck.

"Hey, these are our people. You tell us what happened now!" And Rick is yelling and moving fast, grabbing her leg, her wound, and the woman reacts almost as fast as Daryl would. Daryl's only a millisecond behind, bow trained on her head.

"Don't you ever touch me again!" 

"You'd better start talking," Daryl snarls. "You're gonna have a much bigger problem than a gunshot wound!"

"Find 'em yourself."  
  
And Rick is behind him, his hand catching the corner of Daryl's eye and he flinches as Rick lays a hand on the bow, makes Daryl lower it.   
  
He can't go back to this. Flinching every time Rick is near. Nothing even happened this morning, nothing. So why is this even happening?   
  
She tells them where to find Maggie and Glenn. She tells them about the Governor - he hears the venom in her words, "charming," and it gives him a shiver.   
  
"He got muscle?" Daryl asks, because in his experience, people with charm never have to get their hands dirty. There's always someone else to do it for them. 

"Paramilitary wannabees. They have armed sentries on every wall." She's got a way in and it's not like there's anything else to do but leave Hershel to mend her up and make the plan with everyone else.   
  
It's weird to see them all gathered and realize how few of them there really are now. Rick, Beth, Carl, Carol. Rick sends Carl to guard Hershel - bitch don't got her sword but seems plenty dangerous without it. Oscar and Axel hover at the edges, unsure if they count or not in this new configuration. Daryl figures they have to, or the group is down to a guy just barely off the edge of being crazy, three kids, a baby, a one legged man, and a woman so weak with dehydration she's sitting on the steps for their whole conversation.   
  
"I'll go after 'em," Daryl volunteers right away, and as he expects, Carol pipes in right behind him.   
  
"No one is going after them alone and you shouldn't be going at all -"  
  
"Why not?" he asks. "Ain't like we got so many options. What'm I meant to do, sit here and play fuckin' legos while they got Maggie and Glenn?"  
  
"Rick!"  
  
Rick looks at Carol and spreads his hands wide, helplessly. "What else am I meant to do, Carol? What options do we have? Seventy-five people, armed sentries - we're never going to be able to take the place with just two or three people. It's Glenn and Maggie. What do I do?"  
  
"You would never send Carl on a mission like this."  
  
"I ain't Carl," Daryl grunts. "Bigger'n him. Kin handle myself." He looks at Rick. "S'like you said - ain't no option."  
  
"I'll go," Beth says. She looks tiny and pale, and then Axel steps up next to her. It's a joke, them volunteering. Or not a joke - Beth ain't a joke, but she can't do something like this, and Axel looks like he'd burst into tears the second he saw the world outside the prison fence. Then Oscar steps up. That's better.  
  
They load up the car, Carl struggling under the weight of multiple bags.   
  
"Wish I could go," Carl says, and for a minute Daryl thinks he's being stupid, so jealous cowboys and Indians bullshit, doesn't want to miss out on the action. But then he sees the worry in Carl's eyes, the dread, and he shrugs uncomfortably, shoves the rest of his shit in the car.   
  
"I'll keep an eye on 'im," he mutters, and he doesn't specify who he is. Carl nods. And then they go. 

He sees Rick take Carl to the side, a man to man talk, father and son. There's something cracked between the two of them now, something frayed by Lori's death. But as Rick leans down and looks Carl in the eye, places a gentle hand around the side of Carl's neck, Daryl wonders if it isn't being rewoven before his eyes, being mended. Not all the way, not yet. But a start. 

He goes down the steps towards the car, passes Carol holding the little asskicker. As if feeling Daryl's eyes, the baby kicks, just once. Daryl looks up at Carol.   
  
"Stay safe," he settles for saying, and she smiles at him.   
  
"You too."  
  
He shrugs. "Kin take care of myself."

"Me too. Nine lives, remember?"  
  
Yeah, but she's run through three or four of them by now, at least. Nine lives ain't infinity. Still have to be careful.   
  
"Bring them back," he hears Hershel say, his voice rough. Rick just nods. He gets into the car, starts the engine.

"My baby girl's name is Judith," he says. 

Daryl likes little asskicker better. But Judith is fine too.  
  


* * *

They go for the prison on foot - Daryl feels something settle inside him and realizes how much he missed the woods. After a whole winter living rough, hunting every day, a week in the prison has cut him off from the part of himself he likes best. He makes himself remember this, so when they get back from this mission (if) he'll remember, he'll go out more, hunt more. The woods are what makes him what he likes. He can't forget about that. 

Rick falls back next to him as they walk, and Daryl forces himself not to flinch. It's Rick. Rick whose never laid a hand on Daryl, who treats Daryl like a grown up, Rick is a good man, a man of honor. He shouldn't be scared of him, like a baby, a fucking pussy.   
  
"I - You know, what you did for me, for my baby, while I was - working things out," Rick says, and Daryl grips his bow uneasily. Is Rick pissed? About him taking liberties?  
  
"Din't do nothin'," he mumbles.  
  
"You did. You really did." He feels Rick looking at him. "I know Carol thinks we forget. That you're a kid."

"M'not."   
  
"That you're young, then. I don't forget, Daryl. You're young enough to be my son, and I rely on you - maybe it's too much. I know that."   
  
Daryl doesn't understand how people harp on this. What good would it do for Rick not to rely on him and them all to get killed? What does that do to preserve his fucking innocence or protect him or whatever the fuck people think?  
  
"Daryl?" He looks at Rick. Rick's blue eyes are boring into him, and he feels Rick's hand land on his shoulder and he jumps slightly. But Rick doesn't look away, doesn't let go. It's like what he was doing with Carl earlier, before they left the prison.   
  
"You're not my son." It hits him somewhere inside, harder than it should, because of course he isn't Rick's fucking son - but then Rick continues. "But if you were - I'd be proud to claim you. As proud as I am to claim Carl. And Judith."  
  
Daryl doesn't know what to do, where to look. Rick's hand is branding his shoulder, it feels like, so heavy, pinning him in place, and his breathing is weird - not too fast but somehow he's hyperaware of it, the moving of his chest. What does he say to that? Rick isn't his fucking dad.   
  
"Din't fucking do nothin'," he says again, uncomfortably. 

"Thank you." Rick lets go of his shoulder and Daryl shrugs a couple times, like he's shaking off Rick's touch. But he can still feel it, gentle, pressing into him. 

"It's what we do," he mumbles. And then they're set upon, first by zombies, next by some crazy fuck in a cabin that Michonne runs through with her sword like it's nothing. 

Nothing ever just goes smooth. But hopefully, Daryl thinks as the four of them creep up under the guarded wall, that's about to change. 

* * *


	8. Made to Suffer

Getting in is easier than Daryl thought. It's not easy, but Michonne gets them through and into a house undetected quicker than he though possible, and Daryl feels a grudging amount of respect for her. Which is doused when the streets aren't empty as she said they'd be. They almost get caught by some old fuck in a baseball hat, but they get him down and ziptied faster than lightning, Rick and him a team, a well oiled machine. 

"Where are our people," Rick snarls, and the guy keeps saying he doesn't know. 

But then they announce themselves, gunfire, close by, and that's got to be them. Glenn and Maggie are fucking tough, wouldn't go down without a fight. He wonders if they could sense them, if they felt they were coming near and started to join their own rescue effort. Or maybe they just figured nobody was coming and decided to take matters into their own hands. Either way, Rick and Daryl and Michonne and Oscar are there. They'll back them. 

They always do. 

On the streets everyone is running and yelling, it makes it easy to slip into the chaos, blend. By the time they get to the building the gunfire was coming from, there aren't any sounds anymore. 

Daryl tells himself that's not necessarily a bad thing. 

He can hear someone speaking in the distance, and it makes his stomach clench. He doesn't know why but it gives him a sick feeling, like he knows what's coming and it's something bad, a feeling familiar but alien to this setting. "Come on, on your feet, let's move," someone else is saying, and there they come - or at least Daryl thinks it's them. They got bags on their heads, are dotted with blood - was that what Maggie and Glenn were wearing when they left? Daryl can't remember - but either way, it's act now or get caught, and Rick will always act. 

Always.

The bags might actually be a good thing - the flashbangs go off deafening, but at least they weren't blinded under there. There's smoke billowing from the floor up and everyone is yelling and in they run, Daryl squinting, trying to see through the smoke, hoping he doesn't grab the wrong person. 

"What the hell," he hears someone yell and his skin is crawling again. He knows that voice, he -

But then there is Glenn, bloody and stumbling, his eyes practically swollen shut, and none of the rest of it matters. They found them. They've just got to get out. 

Which is going to be a lot harder than getting in. Everyone is on high alert now and the chaos is different, charged - people are actually looking now, and they stick out like a sore thumb, dragging Glenn, who can barely walk, ducking finally inside a building. 

"Ain't no way out back here," Daryl says, searching, and then he sees Michonne is gone. 

"Should I go look for her?" She'd done right by them, after all. They'd got their people. But Rick is shaking his head. 

"No. We gotta get them out of here." Glenn looks bad - his face swollen and lumpy, blood trickling down his pale chest. 

"Daryl," Glenn says, and he looks, already reloading his bow as he listens. "We didn't tell him."

"Tell him what? Who?" Rick asks, and Maggie is wrapping Glenn in something she found in the store, quickly but gently, trying not to hurt him. 

"This was - Rick, it was Will," Glenn says, and the whole room spins. 

Glenn is babbling. "We didn't want to tell him, Daryl, we - they were asking about the prison and they asked about you, he knew we'd been - I told him we split up, we didn't know where you were, all right, he believed me but we gotta - he was gonna execute me, Rick, threw a walker at me -"

"My - my dad's here?" Daryl says, and he can barely hear himself over the roaring of his ears. "He's the Governor?" Charming, Michonne had said. His dad had never been charming.

"No," Maggie says. He sees her swallow, keep going. "He's someone else. Your dad's his lieutenant or something."

"You - does he know I'm still with you?" he asks, and his voice is so small and thin he can barely hear it. It was his dad, that was who he heard, that was - his dad was here, a year later, his dad was here and -

Glenn shook his head. "He - I told him we split up. Months ago. Don't know if he believed me I think he did but - Rick, I'm sorry." Glenn's face twists. "We told him where the prison was, we couldn't hold out." Maggie, next to him, looks like she's about to cry. 

"Don't," Rick says. "No need to apologize." 

Daryl feels frozen stiff. His dad is here, his dad knows where he is, his dad - 

He can't tell if he's more scared his dad will come for him or that he won't. 

"We got to get out of here, now. Daryl!"

He can't move. His chest, he can feel it moving fast, too fast, his breathing - he remembers Hershel putting his hands on his shoulders, looking in his eyes. Breathe. 

When he comes back, Rick is kneeling in front of him on his knees, hands planted on Daryl's shoulder. "Daryl, we got to get out of here. Now." 

Daryl nods. "But - my dad -" he mumbled through lips that tingle, almost feel numb. "I -"

"We can't look for him now. We've got to go."  
  
Daryl doesn't think that's what he was asking for.

"Daryl. Look at me." He does. Rick's eyes, serious, blue, meet his. "We're getting out of here. Now. All of us. I need you." The hands on his shoulders, the eyes looking in his. "Are you with me?"

Daryl nods again. Swallows. Adjusts his bow. "Yeah," he manages. He takes a breath, feels himself settle a little, get less shaky. He's on a mission. He doesn't have time for feelings. "M'with you."

And they steal out into the night. 

* * *

For a minute it looks like maybe they'd done it. The dark works in their favor, and smoke is on their side. The guys at the gate are used to aiming at walkers and they run faster than them, they zig and zag, they evade when walkers just keep walking til they're dead. It's the guys on the ground they got to watch, the guys who seem like they might actually know what they're doing.   
  
"How many?"  
  
"I didn't see!"  
  
"Don' matter - there's gon' be more of 'em," Daryl says as he reloads. His stomach still feels weird but his fingers are fast and sure. "We need to move." He looks at Glenn, at the path of blood smeared from his mouth to his neck, and looks at Maggie. He's with them. He'll be all right, as long as he's with them.

He and Rick are laying down suppressive fire as Oscar get's Glenn and Maggie up over the wall - Daryl wishes he could, but he's too fucking short. Oscar could lift Glenn with one hand. But he wants out of this place, out, and they're almost there when Rick's gun runs out of fire and he looks like he's seen a ghost. 

And then Oscar's down and Maggie's yelling and they're running again. 

Rick gets to the bus first, helps boost Maggie up. Daryl stays facing out, crouched behind one side, firing. The gunshot is loud in his ears and he tries to listen only to it, to not let any of the rest in, to think about who is out there, who might be firing back. 

But then he turns around and the others aren't on the bus anymore, and he makes a run for it -

He doesn't make it.   
  
"Well, well - looky here. The prodigal son."  
  
Will Dixon is there, right behind him, hand clamped around his neck. The other hand is heavy, strange - something pokes from the stump, a knife. It's dangerously close to Daryl's eye as Will balances his arm on Daryl's shoulder, a gross parody of what Rick had done for him earlier. 

"Daryl." He smells booze on his dad's breath and somehow it's that, out of everything else, that pushes him over the edge into panic.   
  
"Think we're due for a talk."

* * *


	9. The Suicide King (Part 1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chronology for these two chapters is a little skewed from the canon events - this is where the story is going to start seriously diverging from canon. (I think!)

His dad takes him inside first. To a room covered in shattered glass, water, bloated and distorted walker heads on the floor. Sitting there, a bandage over one eye, the white being slowly stained red, is the Governor.   
  
He frowns when he sees Will.   
  
"This is one of them? The terrorists? That's only a boy."  
  
"Hell, he's gotta be fifteen by now, damn near a man," Will says. There is a weird sort of pride in his voice as he shoves Daryl to the man's feet. He feels bits of ground glass pierce the knees of his pants as he lands and bites his cheek. "That there is my boy."  
  
The Governor studies Daryl with his one good eye. Looks at Will. "Your son Andrea knew? Who was at the farm?"  
  
"Ain't at the farm no more. Guess that chink held out on us." Will aims a kick at Daryl's back and, with an instinct that should be rusty from lack of use, Daryl skitters out of the way. "Must be holed up with 'em at the prison. Shoulda figured. They hauled his sorry ass that far, ain't gonna just cut him loose. Not good fuckin' Christians like them. Sanctimonious fucks."  
  
The Governor is looking at Will now. "Is this going to be a problem, Will?"  
  
His dad shrugs. "Hell, don't know why. Got my boy back. He'll tell you anythin' you need to know 'bout them over there at the prison. Ain't that right, Daryl?"  
  
He doesn't say anything. Will's voice turns sharp, and he's got the back of Daryl's shirt in his good hand and is hauling him to his feet before he knows it, the collar cutting into his neck. "I said -"  
  
"Will." The Governor is looking at Will, the corner of his mouth turned down in - is it anger? Or disgust? With Daryl, because they came to his compound and killed his men? "Maybe a lighter touch."

Will laughs. "Hell, you don't know this one. Stubborn as a fuckin' mule. Ain't nothin' gets through that skull." He raps Daryl hard on the head with the metal guard at the end of his stump, and Daryl winces. "Ain't no damn kid no more neither. He took down Eisenberg and Bob Adams all by hisself, saw him. Who knows what else he done tonight."  
  
The Governor's face hardens at that, and any sympathy Daryl thought might be lingering in his lone blue eye is gone. "Get what you need out of him," the Governor says, and he turns away. "We'll figure out what to do with him from there."  
  
"Yessir," he hears Will say. "Daryl, where're your manners? Say 'bye to the Governor."   
  
Daryl doesn't say anything. He's not sure he can. Will's grip on his shirt gets even tighter, and he feels himself being shaken. "You mute fuck, you better fuckin' -"  
  
"Will!" the Governor barks. "I don't care. Just find out what he knows! Now!"   
  
Will knows a dismissal when he hears one. They're out of the room quick, his dad dragging so fast his feet can barely get purchase with the floor, and Daryl knows something.   
  
This is the worst trouble he's ever been in. 

* * *

To his surprise, his dad doesn't take him to the place where they found Maggie and Glenn. Maybe because they trashed it rescuing them. Instead, his dad shoves him and he finds himself in a studio apartment - it's messy, unmade bed, bottles littering the kitchen counter, a heap of laundry in the corner. It looks like home.   
  
He's where Will Dixon sleeps.   
  
The light in here is normal, and Daryl looks at his dad sneakily from under his bangs. His dad looks pretty much the same - he doesn't know why he expected different. It's been less than a year. Except for his hand, he's exactly as Daryl remembered from the day he left the camp, down to the angry gleam in his eye.   
  
"Siddown," Will says, and Daryl doesn't. He stands, mulishly, arms crossed, hands shoved into his armpits to stop them from shaking.   
  
"Now, that ain't no way to welcome your old man. Ain't said boo since we fucking caughtcha. Sloppy," his dad says, and Daryl flinches. "Forgot to cover your rear. Fucking stupid move, but then, you wadn't never the brightest." Will sits himself, hooks a chair with the end of his stump, drags it over. Daryl can't stop looking at the knife at the end, wickedly sharp. Will catches him looking, grins. "Like it, huh? Found myself a medical supply warehouse. Got me somethin' special. Tell me," he says, leaning in. "The chink's bitch din't say - that fucker Rick Grimes still with your group? Up there at the prison?"  
  
Daryl looks at the ground.   
  
"Yeah, fucking thought so. Well. This'll be a fuckin' pleasure." Will leans back in the chair. "Jesus Christ, kid, fuckin' sit already. Gettin' tired just lookin' at you."   
  
He looks at his dad, but his dad doesn't seem to be fucking with him. Daryl sits, then - not on the bed, or a chair or anything. Will hadn't said he could and he's not going to push it. Instead he just plunks down on the floor, one knee under him, the other propped in front of him like some stupid fucking shield or something. He knows it won't work.   
  
"We don' need to know that much," Will says. He's grabbed a bottle from the counter - bourbon, Daryl thinks from the smell - and he's wrestling with it with his one hand as he talks. Daryl wonders if this is his moment, if he should try and run, knock his dad out, get - but the knife on the end of the arm is so sharp and Will is looking up at him again as he thinks about it, and he laughs.   
  
"Don' even fuckin' think about it." Daryl looks back down. "Boy, I know you so good, year apart I know exactly what's goin' on in that brain."  
  
"Don't." He didn't even mean to talk, but it rips itself out of him, through the fear that's twisting his stomach, and he means it to sound angry but he's afraid it sounds scared and that makes him even angrier.  
  
Will's laughter, his fake genial manner, is gone, and he slams the bottle down on the counter with a bang. "Don't fuck with me, boy. It ain't the time."  
  
Daryl wonders if there ever was a time. He wonders how his dad got here - the right hand man of a tyrant, according to Michonne. He doesn't doubt it. He just wonders what it looked like.   
  
Did he even try to go back for Daryl?   
  
"Your chink told us pretty much everythin' already. Well, between him and his bitch." He grins lewdly at Daryl. "Fuckin' nice pair a titties on her, I'll tell you. You seen 'em?"  
  
"Shut up," Daryl snarls, and his dad just laughs again.   
  
"Oh, got a fuckin' crush on the Chinaman's girl! Fuckin' course you do."  
  
"He's Korean," Daryl says, and like that his dad is mad again.   
  
"Oh yeah? How you know? Suck his fuckin' Korean dick?" Will's over at him in a minute, hand fisted in Daryl's hair, and he yanks, hard. Daryl feels tears spring to his eyes. "He even got a dick to suck? Fuck, look at this, man. You look like a fuckin' fag, all this hair. They turn you queer, year with them fuckin' coons and lib'rals and bitches in the sticks? Rick keepin' your ass warm out there all winter?"  
  
Daryl tries a move Merle did once - he tries to headbutt Will. He's still on the ground, on his knees, so he can get some leverage, and if he hits right, maybe he'll hit his dad hard enough to pass out. He doesn't hit right, and his own head explodes with pain, but it's worth it to have Will let go of his hair, to see blood start spurting out of his nose.   
  
"You little shit." The metal stump slams into him and Daryl can't breathe. "Now, I'm doin' this as a fuckin' personal service to you - y'think that the Governor was gon' treat you any different? He was talking public execution when we heard he had a prisoner. Now, I ain't gon' let them murder no Dixon in cold blood, am I? So I say, he's my boy. My flesh and blood. That means something. I'll take care of 'im. And this is the fuckin' thanks I get?"  
  
A boot to the stomach. Then to the back of one leg. Then it stops, suddenly, and Daryl lays there, curled up in a position he doesn't remember taking, his breath shaky and fast but no tears in his eyes. 

"Hell, ain't even much we need to know. We know where the goddamn place is. The bitch said ten people - well, I bet that ain't the most precise number, but can't be much more than that, after all them Andrea says y'all lost between the camp and the farm. So fine, I'll take that. Now, you can tell me who else is there, other than your boyfriend Rick an' the chink and his girl, an' you. That other cop, Sean, he there?"  
  
"Shane," Daryl says quietly. He sits back up.  
  
Now that he's broken his silence, he might as well talk.   
  
"Yeah. Him?"  
  
Daryl nods.   
  
"Who else? Shane's bitch?"  
  
Lori. He means Lori. Daryl nods again.   
  
"A'right. See? Ain't so fuckin' hard. That's six. Who else?"  
  
"T-Dog."  
  
"That spear chucker?" Will spits. "Shit, he made it that far, huh?"   
  
Daryl tries to think of other people to say, people who aren't there but that Will doesn't know are dead. It sounds like Andrea is here - he doesn't let himself think about that - so they probably know about Sophia, about Otis.   
  
"Some guys we met at the prison. Three of them. I don't know their names." Will thumps him with that metal stump again, but not hard. Practically a love tap.   
  
"Uh uh, now. Way I remember, they got them some fuckin' anklebiters running around too - that boy, the one used to follow you like a puppy dog, he there?"  
  
Daryl can't say that Carl is dead. It feels too much like an ill wishing. So he just nods, once. "I - I didn't count him because he's - just a kid."  
  
"Just a kid. Shit, look at you, kid - like you some big man now." There's that bizarre pride again, and it does weird things to his stomach. Is it possible, for the first time in Daryl's memory, maybe in his whole life, that his dad is proud of him?   
  
"A'right now. See? That's a start now, ain't it?"  
  
Daryl nods and takes category of his wounds. He aches all over - can feel the trickle of blood coming from a cut on his cheek, the top of his head stinging from where Will pulled his hair, his ribs have a particular kind of twinge which might mean they're broken or maybe just bruised. Not bad. Not debilitating or anything. Everything still works.   
  
"A'right. Let's move onto the prison, then." Will scrounges around with one hand on the kitchen counter, eyes fixed on Daryl in case he tries anything. He doesn't. He just sits there. He can't seem to find what he's looking for, so he throws a crumpled paper bag and a pen at Daryl. "Map it out."  
  
Daryl stares at the tools. This is something he couldn't do if he wanted to - the prison is a maze, a rat warren, and the lower levels don't have any lights. If it weren't for Glenn's spray paint, they'd all be stuck down there. He swallows, then picks up the pen. For a minute considers trying, drawing bullshit, but then he shakes his head.   
  
"I - we only got there a few days ago. I don' know it good enough to -"  
  
Will raps him on the head again, harder. He winces. "Fuckin' moron." He takes a moment, looking at Daryl, thinking. He takes a sip of bourbon. "Well - okay then, tell me how to get in an' out."  
  
He looks at Will. "Um - there's the gate -" and gets another knock to the head. His skull is pounding now. He closes his eyes.   
  
"No shit there's a fuckin' gate, think I ain't seen a fuckin' prison before? I'm talkin' bout ways in ain't nobody knows about."  
  
"There ain't any."  
  
"Bullshit."  
  
"There ain't. 'S'fuckin' prison, ain't like there's no tunnels or - " And the Will's good hand is pulling his hair again and he retroactively appreciates that he had such short hair when he lived with Will, or Will would have yanked him bald in a week. He hisses, squirms, tries to get away.   
  
"Don' fuckin' sass me. You tellin' me you don' know no ways in'r'out?"  
  
"We jus' got there a couple -"  
  
"You? You're like a goddamn rat, you'll squeeze outta anywhere. Used to disappear for fuckin' days up at the cabin, could never figure out how you got out."   
  
Half the time he'd just walked right out the front door while Will was passed out, but this doesn't seem the time to mention it.  
  
"There's a way in, an' you know it. An' you're gonna tell me."  
  
"There ain't."  
  
"Wrong answer."  
  
"There ain't!" his voice breaks and his dad laughs at him.   
  
"Yeah, fuckin' big man you are, huh? Gonna cry like a bitch because your fuckin' friends left you here with big bad daddy?"  
  
It's like ice in his stomach. He shifts back. Will isn't lying - he can read the look on Daryl's face easily. He laughs again.   
  
"Yeah, just put that together, didja? Shit you're slow. Merle wadn't this stupid. Yeah, they left your ass. Came in guns a-blazing when chink and bitch were here, but you been here what, two hours, and they ain't said boo."  
  
They don't know where he is, he thinks. They think he's lost or dead, they have to figure out where he is first, they have to search, find him, and the town is on high alert, it'll take longer - but deep down, he knows his dad is right. He doesn't blame Rick or them. Glenn was hurt, really hurt, and they'd already lost Oscar. They'd probably gone to bring everyone back to the prison, get Hershel on the case. Plus, Daryl was with his dad. What could they really do?  
  
He's wrong, Daryl thinks to himself. He doesn't know them. He doesn't know Rick. Rick went back for Will, when Will was cuffed on that roof. He'll come for Daryl. He'll try. He will. Daryl just has to wait it out, like he's done a million times before.   
  
Besides, if they went back to the prison without him, Carol'd come out here herself and get him back. Whatever it took. That, he knows.   
  
He lowers his eyes and his dad claps a hand on his shoulder. Daryl jumps. He looks up and his dad is looking at him - almost sympathetically. A rough thumb strokes the back of Daryl's neck.   
  
"Yeah, they was all you had to rely on for a while, huh? Got yourself attached. Well, when you ain't got family, gotta do what you gotta." Is that - guilt in Will's eyes? He shoves Daryl away roughly, but not hard, not with any bite. It doesn't even hurt.   
  
"Well. You're back with me, now. Ain't gotta worry 'bout trash like them no more." Will gets up, points at the paper, the pen. "You think on that - you wanna show the Gov you're useful, don'tcha? He's a good man - knows how to put people to use. You right the wrongs you did here tonight, he'll give you a fair shake. Get us into that prison, hell, you'll have it made here." Will shakes himself out. Grins at Daryl. "I ain't gotta tie you up or nothin', do I?"  
  
Daryl shrugs. Will laughs, booming. "That fuckin' shrug. Man, some things don't change, do they?"  
  
They don't, Daryl thinks, as Will makes his way to the kitchen counter, successfully opens the bottle of bourbon, takes a swig.  
  
They really don't. 

* * *

  
In the morning Daryl feels rougher - his cheek feels swollen, his lip, and his ribs are screaming, but still not the worst thing to ever happen to him. Will did end up tying him up to the radiator, and even if Daryl had wanted to sleep, he knew he wouldn't be able to, his hands crabbed up behind him and his dad snoring on the bed next to him. He didn't let himself cry or anything - he just kept thinking about the others. They were probably back at the car by now. Now they were on the road back to the prison. Now they would be dropping off Glenn and Maggie and Hershel would be looking them over. Maybe they'd found Michonne again and she was with them, was telling them the secret ways in Woodbury like his dad had wanted Daryl to tell the secret ways to the prison. 

They'll be back for him. He knows it. He knows. He just has to wait. 

His dad's in a happy mood in the morning - Daryl remembers the twist of it now, the seesaw, never knowing which version of his father he's going to get. His dad is up now, but when he unties Daryl and gives him the paper bag and the pen again, his mood vanishes as quick as it arrived.   
  
"What - y'ain't thought of nothing?"  
  
"I - there ain't nothin' to think of." Daryl tries to keep his tone polite, no sass. "It's a prison, it's real - "  
  
Pow! His head snaps back and he sees stars. He feels his left eye sting like crazy, imagines he can almost feel it swelling up. It's gonna be one hell of a shiner. He's lucky, he guesses - his dad hit him with his fist. He hit him with that prosthetic, Daryl'd probably be dead.  
  
"Boy, I think you've forgotten what it means to fuckin' respect your elders."  
  
His father's gotten a new belt. It's been a year, of course he has.

"Thought it'd take you longer to fuck up, but guess shoulda expected it. Been with a buncha pansy fucks, no idea real discipline. Ain't on you they didn't know how to keep you in line."

For a minute Daryl thinks about fighting it. But he sees the metal on the end of his dad's wrist, the knife topping it. A whupping was nothing, compared to that. Standard. Par for the fucking course. And he's just got to buy enough time for the others to come get him.

Will finishes unbuckling his new belt. And he christens it on Daryl's back.   
  
He's just finished it when there's a knock on his door - Daryl pulls his shirt back on as his dad answers it, speaks to whoever is outside in a low voice. When he turns back, Daryl is dressed, and Will grins.   
  
"Well, good thing you got yourself presentable - we got us a meetin' with the Governor."

* * *

The room has been cleaned up some from the previous night - the glass swept away, the water mopped up, the walker heads disposed of somewhere. The Governor is standing behind a desk, pouring over something - and at his side is Andrea.   
  
She looks different than from the far, but not much. Her face is more angular, she's thinner, but she's alive and he gapes at her. She looks at him with the same look of shock.  
  
"Daryl! Phillip, what - Daryl, what happened to you, why are you all -"  
  
"One of the terrorists who hit us last night," the Governor interjects smoothly. "Our enemies are using child soldiers against us."  
  
"Phillip, I know him, he's not - Daryl, what happened? Where's Shane and the others, did you lose them? How did you end up with -"  
  
"Andrea, Will and Daryl and I need to have a talk," the Governor says, and Daryl bites his cheek. "Maybe you two could catch up later."  
  
"I - Phillip, this is a mistake. Daryl is a good kid. He - if he was here last night, it's because these people, the convicts or terrorists or whatever, it's because they made him. I mean, look at him, he's all banged up, they must have -"  
  
"Andrea," the Governor says firmly. "I understand. I hear you. But I need to talk to Daryl now."  
  
She quiets. Looks at Will, at the Governor. At Daryl. She sweeps around the desk and before he knows what's happening, she's hugging him. He jerks, holds back a hiss - it's not something he likes anyway, and the welts on his back and his sore ribs make it almost agony. But she's pulling back quickly, and when he sees her again, she's got tears in her eyes.   
  
"I'm sorry," she says, wiping them away. "I know you don't like to be touched."  
  
"S'okay," he mumbles, one eye on Will. "M'glad you're okay."  
  
"Oh, Daryl. You too. The others?"   
  
Daryl looks at Will. Will shakes his head. Daryl just looks at the ground and doesn't answer. Which Andrea seems to take as an answer herself.   
  
"We'll - we'll talk about it later. All right? We'll sort all this out. Phi - the Governor is a good man. He'll get to the bottom of all this, Daryl, all right? It's going to be okay."  
  
Someone has done a fucking number on Andrea. Daryl watches out of the corner of his eye as she opens the door, exits. Closes it behind her. A little bubble of hope that had been rising in his stomach abruptly pops.   
  
He's on his own. Again.

"Well," the Governor says. He's come around to the front of the desk too now, and he's leaning back against it, looking at Will and at Daryl. Daryl looks back at the floor. "Will. Your son looks a little worse for wear since I saw him last."  
  
"Oh, we just had us a long conversation," Will says, slinging an arm over Daryl's shoulder, making his back scream. "Little reunion, between father and son."  
  
"Mm. I see." 

"Told you, sir - kid's stubborn as fuck. But he came 'round to your way a thinkin'. Gave us a list of them in the prison, an' he's workin' on a way we can get in without any a them even knowing we're there."  
  
"Right. Well, the thing is, Will - I don't think that will be necessary."  
  
Will's bravado starts to fade a little. "Whatcha mean?"  
  
"Well - I'm not sure we want the element of surprise. We have the numbers, we have the weapons - a show of force might be exactly what we need. The people need a symbol," the Governor explains, and Daryl shifts his feet. "They're scared after last night, they're hurt, they're angry - they need to see their enemies destroyed, they need to see we can protect them. Shock and awe. That's what the people want."  
  
"Sure," Will says. His hand lands on Daryl's neck, his fingers pressing into the skin, totally at odds with Will's nonchalant tone. Daryl stills. Something is wrong.   
  
"Like the biter fights," Will says amiably. "I getcha. Show a force. Well, you tell me and my boy what you want us to do, an' we'll help however we can. Won't we, Daryl?"  
  
Daryl nods. Something has changed in the air, something is charged, something is moving in a way Daryl doesn't understand - 

"I'm so glad to hear that," the Governor says. And then there's a gun at his dad's head and some other guys with guns pouring through the door and - 

Fuck. 

The others better get here quick.


	10. The Suicide King (Part 2)

They split him and his dad up after they tell them they're gonna kill them. Daryl didn't think he'd mind - he's been back with his dad for less than 24 hours and he's already whupped the shit out of him - but there's a tendril of fear curling up his stomach when they shove him into one of the rooms Maggie and Glenn had been in.   
  
There's a walker on the floor, bloody, and Daryl kicks it. The others are fucking tough. They'll come get him. They will.   
  
Or he'll have to get back to them himself.   
  
He jumps when the door opens, but it's the Governor. He looks around the cell with a slightly wrinkled nose, like it doesn't meet his standards, and takes a step further in. Daryl can see the gun holstered on his belt, and he's got one of his men behind him, a semi automatic cradled in his hands.   
  
"Are you hurt badly?"  
  
Daryl stares at him. The fuck does he care, when he's gonna execute him and his dad that night?   
  
"I mean, don't get me wrong. It's not because you're a kid. Adolescence is a twentieth century invention. You came in here with weapons, attacked my town, killed my men, you have to face those consequences."  
  
Daryl bites the inside of his cheek. The fuck? Is this a lecture?  
  
"Your father really did a number on you."  
  
Daryl shrugs.   
  
"I don't hold with that. I want you to know. That's why we'll have the two of you fighting tonight. It was just going to be you against biters, but. No room for behavior like that in a civilized world. This way, you might even have a chance to get some licks of your own, before it's over." The Governor stares at him. Frowns. "You have a brother, don't you?"  
  
"Why? You seen him?" If his father can come back from the dead, Merle, Merle who is twice as wild and four times as brave as their dad, could be out there somewhere, he could -   
  
"No, no. Just. Older or younger?"  
  
Daryl bites his lip. "Older."  
  
"Good guy?"  
  
He thinks of Merle, drinking with his friends, swearing at a cop, working on his motorcycle in the shed out back, camping with him in the woods, rubbing his shoulder after the first time he shot a gun. "The best," he says.   
  
The Governor nods, slowly. "Yeah."  
  
And then he's gone, leaving Daryl more confused than he started.

* * *

He doesn't know that he could relax enough to sleep, but he tries to rest. He doesn't know what the hell he's going to do tonight, but he knows it'll probably take a lot of energy. He's got his eyes closed when they come for him again - one of the guards has his bow slung across his back. Daryl clenches his fists.   
  
"Nice gear, kid," the guy says, smiling. "Gonna do me a lot of good."  
  
It pisses him off, but then he realizes its use. If he can get his hands on that bow, a lot of stuff might go different.   
  
His dad is in the arena already when Daryl is shoved in. The crowd is screaming, screaming for his blood, and Daryl tries not to listen, tries to ignore them. He tracks the guy with the bow as he loops around the arena, settles in behind the Governor. 

He's not paying close enough attention to his dad, and that's when his dad socks him in the stomach.   
  
Oh. It's starting. Daryl scrambles back, wheezing, dodges a kick - 

But if his dad really wanted him dead, he should have slammed him with his stump, bust his ribs the rest of the way. 

Then his dad is looming over him and he's up before he knows it. He headbutts him for real, hits right - hears the crunch of his dad's nose breaking, the grunt. He flails out with a fist and tries to clock him in the eyes, he's scratching, even, he doesn't care it's a bitch move. He's not going down like this, not to his dad to a crowd of people cheering, not when he can fight back. He'd rather get bit then let his dad win. 

His dad wins, though. His dad always wins. His dad is six inches taller and seventy five pounds heavier and his dad hates losing more than anything else. He gets him pinned quickly, but at least he's bleeding, his face raked with Daryl's nails, his nose tweaked to one side. His dad has his hands around Daryl's neck and this is it, this is how he goes.   
  
But his dad just says, "Follow my lead, kid. Okay?"  
  
Before Daryl can even attempt to figure out what that means, the arena is filling with smoke and light and gunfire and Daryl knows. 

They came for him. At the perfect fucking time. 

* * *

He nabbed his bow on the way out and they follow his dad outside of the wall, all of them spitting and cursing at each other. Rick has him by the fucking hand, like some kind of baby, but Daryl doesn't care, as long as it means he won't get left behind again. By the time they hit the track of woods that leads to the car, the sun is starting to come up. They slow down.   
  
Rick says, "Hold up. Let me have a look at you."  
  
Gentle hands cup his face and he can't help but flinch. His cheek feels hot and sore, his right eye is almost swollen shut. His bottom lip is trickling blood, he can tell, and it feels fat. His ribs ache with every breath, nothing stabbing but sore, and he feels like there's blood on the top of his head too, in his hair. But that might be from headbutting his dad. 

"You all right?"  
  
Daryl just nods. Of course he's all right. They came for him.   
  
"We'll have Hershel look at you when we get back. Clean you up."  
  
"Daryl ain't goin' nowhere with you."  
  
His dad speaks and Daryl jumps. He's almost forgotten Will was there. His eyes dart over. Will is there, not two feet from him, leaning against a tree, arms crossed. Watching with an unreadable look on his face.  
  
"Stay out of this," Rick says, and if looks could kill Will would keel right over. "We all saw what you did back there -"  
  
"What, like save my fuckin' kids life?"  
  
"Like knock the wind out of him and half kill him in front of everyone!"  
  
Will spits. "You musta been watchin' a different fight than me. 'S'called actin'. Right, Daryl?"  
  
Daryl hesitates. In the ring, the fighting there - that might have been acting. He remembers the punch, remembers wondering why he hadn't used his heavier arm. Remembers his dad clobbering the shit out of the walkers that were coming from him. The stuff before the ring, last night, the whupping this morning - that was real, but tonight? He doesn't know. He hesitates.   
  
"I - " Daryl says, then he frowns. Shrugs.   
  
"See? 'Sides, ain't like the boy didn't get his own licks in." Will touches his nose ruefully. "Though fuckin' pussy way to fight, headbutts and fuckin' scratchin'. Musta learned that shit from Merle, ain't learned it from me."  
  
"I think he's learned quite enough from you," Rick hisses, and Maggie puts a hand on his arm, looks at him.   
  
"Rick - Glenn and Michonne, they're going to be waiting, they must be - "  
  
"I know." He looks at Will. "I hear another word out of you, I will shoot you."   
  
Will bares his teeth. "Since when's an officer of the law gotta resort to threats?"  
  
"It's not a threat. It's a promise." Rick steers Daryl next to him and they start walking. He can feel, rather than see, the ugly look on Will's face.   
  
"You're okay, Daryl," he hears Maggie say from his other side. He's sandwiched between them, and she reaches out and touches him, hesitantly on the shoulder. He saw her coming and he still can't stop the flinch. "You're all right. All right? We're all going to be all right." She sounds determined to make it mean something for her and for him. "It's over."

He ducks a look behind him. Will is there, watching, but keeping a reasonable distance back - he clearly doesn't want to tangle with Rick until they're free and clear of any possible follow up from Woodbury. He swallows, then looks at Maggie.   
  
"He din't - do nothin', did he?" _Fuckin' nice pair of titties on her,_ he hears Will say. He doesn't know how else to phrase it, and Maggie looks at him, swallows, shakes his head.   
  
"Not him. It's okay."

It doesn't feel okay though, and the relief at being rescued starts to turn into anxiety. They'll hate him now. His dad fucked up Glenn's face and kidnapped Maggie ad something had gone down with her, he can tell, even if Will didn't do it himself. Will had fucked everything up, again, and now - 

The second they get close enough to the car, Rick whistles. "Glenn!"  
  
"Rick!" he hears Glenn call back, and footsteps crunching through the trees towards them. "Thank god, did you find him, was he -" And then he sees Will and all hell breaks loose. Michonne is pointing her sword at him, Glenn is brandishing a gun, and Daryl is in the middle somehow, arms spread, trying to talk them down with words that don't make sense.   
  
"What is he doing here!"  
  
"Put it down!"  
  
"He tried to kill me!"  
  
"It it wasn't for him Maggie could've -"  
  
"He helped us get outta there," Daryl says, trying to calm things down, but Rick barks at him.  
  
"Yeah, right after he beat the shit outta you!"   
  
Daryl has flinched back at that and for a moment Rick's face is pure remorse, until he sees Will again. They're yelling enough to bring a whole hoard of walkers down on them, and Daryl finally yells "Shut up already, everyone, please!"  
  
He hears his father chuckle. "Aw, well, looks like you've gone native right here, Daryl. ' _Please_.'"  
  
"You too," he snarls, and he looks away before he can see his dad's face sour. "S'tryin' to stop 'em from killin' you, least you kin do is -"  
  
"Boy, I know you didn't just -"  
  
"Don't you touch him!" Rick yells, and Will is slammed up against a tree. "Don't! This is over, you hear me? Over!"  
  
"Over?" Will says. He grins at Rick with bloody teeth, spits a wad of blood and mucus out of his mouth. "Man, it's just beginning."

* * *

They have to get back. Daryl knows that. They've spent a whole day longer out than they planned, trying to rescue Daryl, and the others back at the prison will be frantic. Plus, if what his dad says about the Governor is true, then he's probably on his way to the prison right now, and the others have no idea. They've got to warn them. Daryl knows this. They've got to go. 

"Where you think you're goin'?" Will asks him as he loads up his bow, his gear in the back of the car.   
  
"Back," Daryl grunts. He hadn't thought this far through. He knew the others would rescue in - he'd hoped at least - but he'd never thought they'd be rescuing his father too. He looks at Rick, unsure. "He - I mean. We can't take him?"  
  
Rick puts his hands on Daryl's shoulders again and Daryl lets him, even though it stings the marks on his back.   
  
"That's not a good idea."   
  
"I'm not having him in the prison -"  
  
"He put a gun to our heads, beat the shit out of me, of you - you really want him in the prison, sleeping in the same cell block as Carol or Beth? Or the baby?"  
  
"He ain't a rapist," Daryl mutters.  
  
"Just a psychopathic monster - "  
  
"He's my dad!"  
  
Rick wipes his thumb over Daryl's chin. "Calm down," he says. "You're bleeding."  
  
"Get your kiddy fuckin' hands off my kid, pig!"   
  
Will is being restrained by Michonne, who looks like she's hoping Will will give her a reason to run him straight through.   
  
"What'd you call me?" Rick snarls, and Will snarls right back, like they really are wild animals, like they do belong in the forest.   
  
"Yeah, I seen you - putting your goddamn hands all over my fuckin' kid. Yeah, sure you were real fuckin' eager to keep him around, fuckin' orphan, needs you for everythin', bet you taught him how to be real fuckin' grateful -"  
  
Daryl feels sick, sick at what his dad is saying, and the way Rick looks like he really will kill him this time - 

"Don'!" he says, and he grabs Rick's arm. "Rick, don', he - he's tryin' to look out for me, he don' mean -"  
  
"Turn my kid into a fuckin' fag like you? Daryl, get your goddamn hands offa -"  
  
"You say that one more time I will blow your brains out, I don't care what you -"  
  
"Boy! You get your ass over here." Will seems a little shocked when Daryl doesn't move. "Daryl!"  
  
Daryl doesn't know what to do. On the one hand, Will had just saved his life. He seemed worried about him, really worried, about him leaving with Rick, and he looked - guilty? Or something close to it last night, when he talked about not going back for Daryl. That was more care than he'd gotten from Will Dixon in practically his whole life.   
  
On the other, the idea of being out on the road again, just him and his dad, makes him want to puke.   
  
"Daryl," he hears Rick say, and Rick is there, in front of him, and Daryl blinks. "Daryl - you do not have to go with him. Hear me?"  
  
He doesn't have to go. He was going to leave anyway, when he was sixteen, and he's almost fifteen now. What's one more year at the end of the world?

"We can' just - leave him," Daryl whispers, and Rick nods.   
  
"I know. We'll leave him a knife. He'll be okay."

"No, I -" Daryl doesn't even know what he's saying. "I mean. I can't leave him."  
  
Rick stares at him. "Daryl - he's the one who did this to you - your face -"  
  
"Was actin'," he mutters.   
  
"You went into that ring already bruised. Daryl -"  
  
"He's - he's my dad," he says to Rick, and Rick doesn't understand. Maybe he thinks that if Rick treated Carl the way Will treated Daryl, Carl would hate him, would run away from him the first chance he got. But Daryl knows that's not true. Thinks of all the times he could have run away, really run away, and he never had. Sure he'd stay out a few days, but then he'd always be home, he'd try again. Because maybe Will would be different, maybe Will would change. It's always possible. And this is the most change Daryl has ever seen. He thinks of the first day he met Rick, of Rick saying "I can't let a man die of exposure. Me." Daryl can't leave his father, even though he knows he should, even though if it were anyone else he'd be yelling at the to get in the fucking car already. Him. He can't do that. This is the most change Daryl has ever seen out of Will, and he has to give it a chance. Him.   
  
"I am not leaving you with him," Rick says seriously, and Daryl twists. Why is Rick making this harder? Does he think Daryl wants this? He knows it'll probably end terrible, stuff with Will always does. But what if this is real and he ignores it and that's the last he has of any contact with his family.  
  
"You're not my dad. He is."  
  
"Daryl -"

"Blood's blood. He's family."  
  
"No," Glenn says fiercely. "He's not your family. My blood, my family, is standing right here and waiting for us back at the prison."   
  
Yeah. They all got family back there. Everyone except him.   
  
"No, Daryl - you are part of that family," Rick says, and Daryl nods, looking at the ground. Yeah, sure, Rick has to say that. He was the dumb orphan they took in. He knows what his dad said about Rick ( _kiddy fuckin' hands_ ) is bullshit, but part of it is true. He's a dogooder. They were never gonna just cut Daryl loose. It doesn't fit their story about themselves. The good guys. But they didn't pick him to be with them. They just had to drag him along.   
  
His father didn't pick him either. But it's different when it's blood.

"Boy's made up his mind!" his father yells. 

"I gotta go," Daryl whispers before he can change his mind. "M'sorry." He steps away from Rick, opens the back of the car.   
  
"Daryl - " Rick looks almost physically pained, and Maggie and Glenn are getting in on it too.   
  
"Rick! You can't - that's not what he meant. Daryl, don't do this. Daryl!"  
  
"What do you want us to tell Carol?" Glenn shoots out, and Daryl freezes. Carol.   
  
It'll kill her, Daryl knows. It'll absolutely kill her. 

His hands drop from his bow and his bag and start to shake. He can't do it to her. He wants to say she'll understand, and she probably would - she'd had Ed, after all, and she'd had Sophia. She knows what it's like to need something bad for you, to give chances to people who haven't earned them. To be connected to someone by blood in a way that can never disappear. She'd know exactly why he left. But still, she'd think it was her fault. Like with Sophia. Sometimes at night still, when she thinks everyone else is asleep, she'll cry. He heard her often enough on the road.   
  
"I'm sorry," she moans, tears trickling down her cheeks. "I'm so sorry."  
  
She'd blame herself. She wouldn't blame him. But it'd kill her.   
  
And she just got back from the dead. He can't put her there for real.   
  
It's close. He almost grabs the bow anyway, the bag. This is the chance he's been waiting for his whole life, the chance that something will change, something substantial, but maybe something already has changed, because he's closing the trunk of the car and walking around to the passengers side door. He gets in next to Rick - Michonne is in the back with Maggie and Glenn, and Daryl can hear his dad running up to the car, slamming hands on it.   
  
"Daryl! You get outta this car right fuckin' now. I am your blood, you hear me! Blood! Daryl! Grimes, you fuckin' cho-mo sumbitch, I'm gonna -"  
  
But then they are driving, driving, and no one says anything. They don't even say anything when Daryl tucks his feet up on the dashboard, hides his head in his knees, and tries not to cry all the way home. 

* * *

Carol and Carl are there at the gate, waiting. Rick is out of the car and holding Carl before he can blink and Maggie jumps up front - she seems to want some room from Glenn. Daryl's not going to cry anymore - fucking pansy ass bullshit thing to do - but he hasn't been paying attention and he jumps when his own car door slams open and Carol is there.   
  
"Thank God," she says, and then she's hugging him. It hurts - his ribs, his back, his heart. It's maybe the second hug he's ever gotten that he can remember and unlike the first one, this one he reciprocates.   
  
"You're all right," Carol is saying, and she's smoothing his hair like she always did with Sophia. "Thank God, Daryl, thank God."  
  
And then he is crying, he's stuck in her arms and his whole body hurts and his dad is on the road somewhere with a metal stump and no weapons and he's gone, he's really gone. He's crying like he's never cried before - no sound, he doesn't want anyone to hear him, he doesn't want anyone to know except Carol. He wishes Carol didn't know but she's too close to hide it from so he buries his head in the crook of her shoulder and tries not to shake and cries.   
  
"Here, honey, step out of the car, we'll walk up - go on," Carol says to Maggie. "I've got him."  
  
"He's really hurt, Carol, he shouldn't -"  
  
And that's when Carol seems to really see him, his face, his stiffness, the blood streaked and smeared all over him.   
  
"What happened to you?" she's saying, and she touches his face with soft cool hands and he flinches - he wishes people would stop doing that, it fucking hurts. He just shakes his head and swallows, trying to trap the tears in his throat so no one will know.   
  
"M'fine," he says, but his voice cracks on fine. Big man.   
  
"We'll get you to Hershel right away."  
  
"Glenn's worse," he says, and he's sure Glenn is.   
  
"We'll get you all to Hershel. You'll be okay. We've got you, now, all right? You're going to be all right."   
  
Carol is pulling away from him and he almost wants to grab her, to not let her leave, but then she is closing the front door and hopping into the backseat, the seat vacated by Maggie. It's right behind him and she reaches her hand forward to the gap between the driver and passenger seats and takes Daryl's hand.  
  
"We've got you," she says, and he lets himself feel her hand on his and looks out the window at the field, the forest surrounding the prison, the grey concrete of their new place.   
  
They have him. He just wishes he knew that was the right thing.


	11. Home (Part 1)

Carol brings Daryl to Hershel's cell first thing, even though he keeps saying Glenn is worse. Hershel isn't there - he's probably out there with Maggie right now, hugging her, thanking his fucking God that she's all right. He feels his mouth set into a scowl and he sits on the lower bunk, pulls all the way back to the darkest corner, pulls his knees in close. That's her dad, he tells himself. Of course he's happy.   
  
It's just, why does everyone else get to have their father and Daryl has to give him up?   
  
He knows they think Will isn't some big loss, and probably he's not. He's mean and hard and he drinks too much and if there's a way to make meth in the apocalypse, he'd be even worse. But he's all Daryl's got. And they won't let him have him. 

Carol sits on the floor across from him. Tries to meet his eye.   
  
"You okay?"  
  
He grunts. Picks at a hole in the knee of his jeans. Was that there before Woodbury? Maybe from kneeling on that fucking glass at the Governor's place.   
  
"Hershel will look you over. Fix you up."  
  
"Don' need no fixin'. 'M'fine."  
  
Carol doesn't say anything to that.   
  
"He should look at Glenn first. They got him good before we even got there."  
  
"I saw. But I have to say - it's not a competition, but if it was, I think you'd be pulling out ahead."  
  
He scowls further and pulls in his knees. Glenn got tortured, had a walker thrown at him, Maggie had - something go down. Daryl? He just spent a day with his dad. He's spent a lifetime of them almost the same way.   
  
Without the attempted public execution part at the end.  
  
"Do you want to talk about it?" Daryl sucks his teeth. Carol laughs. "Yeah, I figured. But still." Carol is looking at him, and he sees her eyes fill up all of a sudden, sees her look away, blink.   
  
"I shouldn't have let you go."  
  
"Din't," Daryl says. "Went by myself."  
  
"I should have fought harder. You're - you can do so much, the others forget you're a kid. I shouldn't let them."  
  
"Ain't a kid," he mumbles. "Ad'lescents a twentieth cent'ry construct."  
  
Carol looks so gobsmacked he almost laughs. She seems his smile, small, quick, and she smiles too. Inches a little closer. It doesn't bother him.   
  
"Look at you, getting so smart." Her smile fades a little. "It's - maybe it's not that you're a kid. I know you're not, in a lot of ways. You're capable, you're one of the most capable people I've ever met. But - Daryl, everyone deserves someone to look out for them. To protect them. Kid or adult, it's - and you deserve that too."  
  
Then it's Daryl's eyes filling with tears, he's the one turning away blinking. There's something wrong with Carol's thinking there, he knows there is, but he can't think hard enough about it to respond without his eyes watering like a fucking baby and his throat feeling thick, so he pushes it away, pretends she hasn't said it, pretends it doesn't mean anything.   
  
"Was my dad," he hears himself say, and he doesn't look back at Carol once he says it. Doesn't want to see her face, the anger or hurt or disgust, the judgement. He braces himself for more of what Glenn and Maggie and Rick were saying in the woods, his dad's a psycho, a monster, no good -  
  
But it's Carol. Instead of saying that, instead of saying anything, he feels the mattress next to him sag. She's sitting next to him, and gently, so gently, she loops an arm around his shoulder and pulls him in. He resists for a second, but then she's settling his head on her shoulder, carding his fingers through his hair again.   
  
She doesn't say anything. Just sits.   
  
That's more than enough. 

* * *

It doesn't mean he wants her there when Hershel gets back from treating Maggie and Glenn.   
  
At first he's glad because Hershel is probably pissed at Will, and Will isn't here. Daryl's the closest he can get, and he thinks about that look in Maggie's eyes, how scared she was, and he's glad Carol's here at least to remind Hershel not to let his temper get the best of him.   
  
But then he realizes Hershel's going to make him strip down and his relief turns to ashes and he wants Carol gone.  
  
It's not like she doesn't know. Daryl's fucked up, and they've been traveling together a long time - she's seen more than he wanted any of them to, he's sure of that. But there's a difference in her seeing old shit can't nobody do anything about and seeing the new, still bleeding, see how fucked up he really is. He already let her touch him and shit and that's enough of the touchy feely crap for one day. He doesn't need anymore, doesn't need it to cross over from empathy to pity.   
  
It's Carol, though. She's smart, smarter than any of the others give her credit for. She's crawling out from the bottom bunk the second Hershel appears in the doorway.   
  
"Have you eaten anything since you left?"  
  
His stomach chooses that moment to answer. A low rumble.   
  
"I'll fix you something. Soup all right?"  
  
"Whatever," he mumbles, and then Carol and Hershel are looking at each other and then Carol is gone.   
  
"Should do Glenn first," he says, as Hershel hobbles his way into the cell. His arms must be getting tired from all that crutching.   
  
"I already have. Now it's your turn."  
  
"M'sorry." Maybe if he gets it out of the way straight off, Hershel will realize Daryl didn't want any of this to happen, that he hadn't -   
  
"So am I." What's Hershel sorry for? For what happened to Maggie? "Now, let's have a look at you. Come on out from under there."  
  
Hershel sits on the chair in the cell, heavily, and Daryl remembers he's just lost his goddamn leg and is having to stitch together all their sorry asses.   
  
Daryl creeps out - slow, in case Hershel is just pretending not to be angry. But he doesn't think Hershel would do that. If he were going to do anything, it'd be because he lost his temper, lost control. He wouldn't trick Daryl into thinking nothing was wrong. He'd be walloping him because he deserved it and he wouldn't need to lie. But Hershel is just sitting there, hands on his knees, looking at Daryl evenly. So he comes out the rest of the way. 

"You want to tell me what happened?"  
  
"Ain't they said a'ready?"  
  
"Maggie told me what she saw."  
  
"Tha's everythin', then." He feels Hershel looking at him, and after a long moment, Hershel nods. 

"Where do you want to start?"   
  
Daryl shrugs. Winces.   
  
"Well, I suppose that answers the question. Take off your shirt. Let's see what's under there."  
  
He starts to unbutton the front, slowly. Not on purpose, but his fingers are shaking a little. His head twitches towards the cell door - even if he closed it there wouldn't be any privacy, bars so easy to see through. And if he closed it, we wouldn't be able to get away if Hershel - 

"They're in the common room. Dealing with some new people."  
  
Daryl stares. New people? The fuck?   
  
"Don't you worry about that now. You'll meet them soon enough. Let's see." Daryl's unbuttoned his shirt and Hershel is looking at his ribs, frowning. He touches, gentle, but it makes Daryl hiss.   
  
"They broke?" he asks, as Hershel keeps frowning.   
  
"I don't think so - hopefully just bruised. I'll want to keep an eye on those. I'm more worried about internal bleeding."   
  
"Feel okay."   
  
"Well, we'll have to wait and see. You need to tell me immediately if you feel dizzy, confused, weak, anything like that." Daryl nods, and Hershel's frown deepens. "I'm serious, Daryl. Any internal bleeding, you could die. We'd need to know."  
  
"A'right." Daryl doesn't know what they'd do if he did have internal bleeding, and he doesn't think he does - it'd been a bad day, but he'd had worse and come through it all right. But he guesses if he's a ticking walker time bomb, the others would need to know. That's fair.   
  
"Bruised up pretty bad, but I think it's mostly superficial," Hershel murmurs, and he slides Daryl's shirt down over his shoulders so it's still half on, but Hershel can look at his whole chest. Daryl risks a glance down and wishes he hadn't. His chest looks like he took a bath in purple paint, the marks deepening now. He thinks he can almost see the imprint of a rivet, or a boot, from where his dad punched him, kicked him. But that's probably his imagination. It makes him feel a little sick and he looks away, takes a deep breath.   
  
Hershel looks up at him. "Nothing much for these except to rest. Maybe make you a cold water compress. We have a little of the arnica cream left, but Glenn has it now. It's not enough for all of these."  
  
"Glenn can keep it. He's worse off'n me."  
  
"It's a very near thing." Hershel looks at him, pensively. "I'd apply it to these stomach bruises first, then your shoulders. Don't waste it on the ribs - there's not enough of it to do any good and it's the ribs themselves that are the problem, not the skin over them."  
  
"Glenn should use it. I -"  
  
"Glenn is using it. Then you'll use it. That's the way it works." Hershel closes his eyes for a second and Daryl feels bad. Hershel must be exhausted, crutching his way everywhere, worried sick about Maggie, and he has to deal with Daryl and his dumb ass.   
  
"Let me see that eye." Hershel moves slow and Daryl is able to stifle the instinctive jerk. He twitches a little when Hershel touches his face, but that's because it hurts, not because he's some scared pussy. Hershel is thorough - he even makes Daryl open his mouth so he can look at his teeth. Daryl winces as it tugs at his split lip.  
  
"You can use the arnica on the cheek, but not on the black eye - if it gets inside your eye, it'll be trouble. Lower your head?"  
  
He feels Hershel carding through his hair and he shivers. It's not like when Carol does it. It makes him antsy. "You have some blood here, but I can't find a cut -"  
  
"Ain't mine," Daryl mumbles, eyes fixed on his lap. "S'my dad's."  
  
Hershel is quiet. "Look back up at me?" He makes Daryl track his finger with his eyes, shines one of the flashlights into them. "I don't think you have a concussion, but -"  
  
"M'fine," Daryl mumbles. "Ain't nothin' to do." Although maybe he does have a concussion - maybe that's what made him leave his dad in the first place, made him snot all over Carol like some fucking baby. Maybe he's not right in the head and when he heals up he'll realize what he's done, abandoned his father to nothing, let him get eaten by walkers -

"Still. We'll keep an eye on that too." Hershel leans back and lets out a long sigh. Daryl tenses. Here it comes. He's gonna lay into him now, about Maggie, maybe not with his fists but with his words, for sure -  
  
"All right. We both knew this was coming. Turn around."  
  
Daryl's blood turns to fucking ice. He's gonna do it, Hershel's really going to whup him - but then he realizes he just means he wants to see his back.   
  
"Ain't nothin' there," he says quickly. "M'fine."  
  
"Daryl."  
  
"I am," he says quick. "Ain't they told you - yeah, he whopped me good in the arena, but that was actin', he told me, he din't mean to -"  
  
"Daryl," Hershel says again, quietly. "It's all right."  
  
And then he's angry, flooding through him like fire melting ice, and he yanks back, pulls his shirt back up over the shoulders. It isn't all right. And Hershel's a fucking idiot for pretending it is. 

"Fuck off, old man," he spits. "I said a'ready, din't I - I'm fuckin' fine! Glenn's the one got himself fuckin' tortured and Maggie's all fucked up, go fuckin' work on them! I don't need your help, I don't need any of y'all for nothin', so quit lookin' at me like I'm -" Hershel is moving towards him and Daryl is skittering backwards until he hits the wall, the welts on his back stinging but nothing compared to what Hershel will probably do to him now that he's -

"M'sorry," he hears himself saying, and he hates himself for it. Apologizing is like begging, it doesn't get you anywhere, it's weak. It's like rolling over and showing your belly in a fight, it means whoever is whupping you can do whatever they want to you. But he is sorry - he's sorry his dad tortured Glenn and fucked up Maggie and he's sorry he left him on the side of the road and he's sorry for crying and being weak and for never finding Sophia, he's sorry any of this happened, he's so sorry.   
  
"None of this is your fault," Hershel says, and he stops just before Daryl. He was scooting himself forward awkwardly with the chair - Christ, he's running scared from an old guy with one fucking leg - and he doesn't touch Daryl. Daryl's all crammed up under the lower bunk again, knees to his chest, and Hershel just lays one hand next to him on the mattress.   
  
"It was my dad," he says, and he wonders if Hershel doesn't know this somehow, if Glenn and Maggie hadn't said. But Daryl had said, hadn't he, or Rick or somebody, nobody was going to keep that secret from the whole group, not when -  
  
"I know."  
  
Daryl looks at Hershel and opens his mouth, to explain what Hershel doesn't seem to get, that all of this is his fault. But instead, what comes out is, "I left him."  
  
"I know. I'm sorry."

"You ain't," Daryl snarls. "Ain't none of you, makin' me choose - y'all didn't want him here, Rick said, don't lie -"  
  
"I want to kill him for what he's done." It's even more terrible to hear because Hershel looks so calm when he says it. "To Glenn, to Maggie. And to you."  
  
"He didn't do shit to me -"

"Even if he hadn't done anything now, what he's done in the past would be more than enough." Daryl quiets. "I wish he were dead and I wish I were the one to do it. But I'm sorry you had to leave him. I'm sorry we made you choose."  
  
"Weren't no choice," Daryl mumbles, and he finds himself biting his thumb. "Couldn't leave Carol."  
  
"You could have."  
  
"Naw. Couldn't."   
  
They sit together there for a long moment.  
  
"I have some antiseptic," Hershel says. "You can apply it yourself to the front, to your face even, but someone has to apply it to your back." Daryl notices they aren't fighting anymore about what may or may not be on his back. "I can go get Carol if you're more comfortable -"  
  
"Don't." He doesn't want her to see. He shifts. "There's a mirror. In the bathroom. Could do it there. Myself."  
  
"You wouldn't be able to reach." A pause. "You saved my girl."  
  
"Wadn't me, was Rick," Daryl protests. Doesn't know how to explain if it weren't for his dad, Maggie wouldn't need saving.   
  
"Yes. And you." Pause. "Let me help you, Daryl."   
  
Daryl hesitates. Hears Carol, in his head, _you deserve that too_.   
  
"It ain't - it really ain't that bad," he says again, but he feels his legs unfolding, feels himself scooting forward more on the mattress. "Really, had worse."  
  
"Then it won't take me long."  
  
Daryl bites his lip. "I don' wanna - talk anymore."  
  
"All right. Then we won't." And Hershel is as good as his word. Daryl turns around and Hershel doesn't say anything as Daryl unbuttons his shirt, takes it off. The cool air feels good on his skin but makes him shiver - it's damp in the prison, clammy. Hershel navigates him from sitting to laying down - it feels awkward, humiliating, a little frightening to be laying down, having his back exposed to the door to the cell, exposed to Hershel. He twitches as Hershel cleans his wounds out, partially because that shit stings, but also because he thinks he keeps hearing footsteps, echoing through the halls of the prison, making their way closer.   
  
"Done," Hershel says, and Daryl is back up like lightning, so fast it makes his back twinge, and Hershel holds out a hold. "Slow down, though. Let me put a bandage on those. And you need a clean shirt."  
  
Daryl frowns - he doesn't know if any of them have what could be considered a clean shirt - but Hershel is already turning back, a roll of gauze in his hands.   
  
"Should save it," he says. "Ain't that bad." He's never fucking bandaged himself up like a mummy after a whupping and he isn't going to start now. "Might need it for somethin' worse. Like your leg."   
  
Hershel does actually see to weigh that, because he puts the roll of bandages down and instead gets a big gauze pad and some medical tape.   
  
"Just one, then. There's one near your shoulder, you're going to aggravate it pulling that bow around like you do. We'll start with that for now, and if you need more, you say." Daryl nods. "Daryl? I mean it. You have to say. Or I'll wrap you up right now."  
  
"I'll say." And then it's quiet again until he finishes.   
  
Hershel digs around in his own things and holds out a tee shirt that used to be white - more of a dingy gray now, pit stains, too many washings in creeks. "Put this on until you can get something of yours."  
  
Daryl takes it, slowly. He remembers back at the farm, Hershel lending him his step-son's sweater, and he wonders where that sweater is now. What happened to the farm. He thinks about the pond and the Cherokee roses, the woods, deep and quiet, the plodding of the cattle, the whickering of horse. He misses it suddenly, and busies himself pulling the shirt on, trying not to tug too hard or undo any of Hershel's work.   
  
"I'll give it back."  
  
"You'd best - I only have so many shirts to my name." Hershel rests a second on the chair, then goes for the crutches.   
  
"M'sorry, " Daryl says when Hershel gets to his feet - foot. He tries to say it for real, not like some kid scared he's gonna get pounded. "Bout what happened to Maggie. And Glenn."  
  
"They're going to be all right," Hershel says firmly. "And so are you."  
  
And then he's gone, limping his way down the corridor, and Daryl waits a minute before he gets the hell out of there too.   
  


* * *

He's slurping down soup with Carol at the table when the others come. It's a pack of ramen - something Daryl used to buy for himself whenever he scrounged up some money and eat when his dad was on a bender. It never tasted this good, though. Maybe Carol added something - she was good at cooking. Or maybe it's just because he's feeling better, Hershel having patched him up, and he feels like maybe Hershel won't ever yell at him for what happened, and if he doesn't, maybe the others won't either. Maybe they'll understand. Maybe it'll be okay. Maybe.  
  
But then there's yelling from the common room at the end of the hall and Carol tenses, her hand goes for her gun, but before she can get out the door it clangs open and Rick is there, wild eyed, Hershel trying to keep up with him, and Daryl feels himself shrink, head down into his bowl. Maybe Maggie finally told them what had happened with the Governor, maybe now they were all -

"Rick? What's wrong?"  
  
His eyes go past Carol, past Daryl without recognition. "Get out," he's muttering, "Got to get out, got to - why are you here, dead, dead, no, no, no -"  
  
And Daryl thinks, as his stomach, now feeling uncomfortably full, sinks and the noodles harden into one solid mass, that maybe everything isn't going to be okay after all.


	12. Home (Part 2)

No one really knows what set Rick off. Daryl doesn't know that he cares, except that if they knew, maybe they'd know how to fix it. Daryl can't quite meet Carl's eye - he'd promised to look after Rick, after all, and he'd let him come back like this.   
  
He's outside now. It's better. When he was inside, his muttering echoed off the walls, no escaping it. And what he said -   
  
"Lori - no, no, no, you're not - Shane, saw him, tried to - Lori, please, Lori, without - can't, can't -"  
  
And once, that night, when everyone was asleep - "Carl, can't take care of - what kind of father am I, what kind of - let Daryl -"  
  
Daryl rolled over and pulled his pillow over his ears and when he woke up, Rick was gone outside. Roaming.   
  
"Leave him," Hershel says quietly, as Daryl looks out the barred window to where Rick is disappearing behind tall grass. Daryl looks at Hershel - he wasn't going to go after him, not with Rick so unpredictable. He'd sounded ready to kill the others. But still, Daryl wonders. Shouldn't somebody go? Try to snap him back?   
  
But maybe there is no snapping him back. Maybe this is Rick now. 

Or maybe Rick needs to find his own way home.   
  
They found chalk somewhere and Glenn is drawing out a map of the prison. Daryl thinks Glenn's map is way better than anything Daryl could have churned out for his dad, if his dad had really made him. But Glenn is good at stuff like that - planning, strategy, maps. He's smart. Daryl has instinct but Glenn has savvy, and sometimes Daryl wonders what it's like, being able to look at the big picture, being able to see all the parts of something. The realization that the prison isn't secure does something to Glenn. It does something to Daryl too. He thinks about the Governor, the blood slowly staining his white wrapped eye. _Adolescents is a twentieth century concept._ He looks at Beth, at Carl. At Glenn's bloody lip, at the way Maggie hands back against the wall, picking at her fingers.  
  
"Why are we even so sure he's going to attack?" Beth asks. "Maybe you scared him off."  
  
Daryl thinks of his father. Men like him didn't get scared off, and his father wouldn't follow someone weak. That means the Governor's coming.

"He had fish tanks full of heads," Michonne says, and Daryl figures that's maybe a better way to phrase it.

And they burned through any lead time them might have had, burned through it putting Glenn and Daryl back together, in watching Rick go crazy. Glenn is acting a little crazy too - he wants to hit the Governor now.   
  
"He won't be expecting it."  
  
"Cause it's a stupid idea," Daryl mumbles, and Glenn glares at him and Daryl shrinks.   
  
"We sneak back in, put a bullet in his head."  
  
"We're not assassins," Carol says. Daryl thinks she's probably just pointing out that none of them are likely to be able to steal in, shoot a guy, and steal out without anyone being the wiser. 

"You know where his apartment is," Glenn says to Michonne, limping over, which Daryl thinks proves the flaw in this plan. "We could end this tonight."  
  
"He didn't know you were coming last time," Hershel says. Slow, calm. Like he's walking Glenn through the steps. "And look what happened. You were almost killed. Daryl was captured." He makes himself even smaller. "And you and Maggie were almost executed."  
  
By Daryl's father. He wonders what will happen when Glenn figures out that he can't get to the Governor, or to Will, who if he is still alive will be long gone from where they left him. But Daryl is right here.   
  
He's never been scared of Glenn before.

"Rick would never allow this."  
  
"You really think he's in any position to make that choice?"  
  
Hershel thinks they should leave. He thinks the prison's a graveyard. It is, but so is everywhere else. Glenn is harsh about it, but he isn't wrong. The little asskicker wakes up all of them at least once a night. Carol says she's a good baby - that Sophia was a screamer, that it used to drive Ed out of the house. The little asskicker isn't like that. But even still, she's a baby. She cries. And Hershel, fast as he's getting on those crutches, could never outrun a walker. Hell, can Hershel even drive anymore? 

Maggie walks away and Glenn doesn't go after her and that, more than anything, shows Daryl how deeply wrong everything is.   
  
Maybe he shouldn't have come back.

* * *

Glenn and Carl go down to the tombs, to figure out where the breach is. Daryl offers to go, dreading it - alone in the dark with an angry Glenn - but Hershel puts the kibbosh on it.   
  
"You're in no condition," he says bluntly. "You want to help this group, you take it easy and get yourself better."  
  
"He's right, Daryl." Daryl tries to remember Glenn in his baseball hat, Glenn throwing all the Uno cards up in the air, Glenn telling him and Carl progressively stupider jokes ("What do you call a group of killer whales playing instruments? An ORCA-stra!") as Glenn looks over at him, one of his eyes purpled and swollen like Daryl's own. "Anyway, in case anything happens, I need you out here."  
  
Daryl just nods. 

Then Glenn looks around, and he's mad again. "Whose on watch?"  
  
Nobody. It's Rick's turn.   
  
Glenn and Carl go underground and the others get ready to make a stand. It reminds Daryl of the last days at the farm - moving the cars, boarding up the windows. There's less to do here - the windows are already barred, the walls are thick stone, they moved the cars already. Daryl is mending bolts when Glenn and Carl come back with bad news, Glenn with a new plan.   
  
"We just need to scout the far side of the prison. Take a car, make it quick. I'll take Maggie."  
  
Hershel pauses. "You sure she's up to that?"  
  
Daryl tries not to breathe. But Glenn doesn't say anything. Just turns to go get her.   
  
And emerges without her. 

* * *

Daryl tries to go help Carol reinforcing the walkway, but Axel is with her and Carol sends him back.   
  
"These things is heavy, little man," Axel says, and Daryl glares at him.   
  
"He's not wrong," Carol says, and she brushes back Daryl's hair. He ducks away, then looks back quick, in case he hurt her. But she just puts her hand down and keeps working. "Rest, Daryl. That's the best thing you could do."  
  
He can't rest. When he rests he thinks about his dad, slamming his metal stump against the side of the car as they drove away, thinks about Glenn's bloody chest when they rescued him, thinks about Rick out there speaking to ghosts. Thinks about Maggie. He can't rest in the cell block, three doors down, and listen as she - 

He doesn't go back inside. He goes outside, instead, to the yard. Tucks himself out of the way, under some stairs. He can hear Axel and Carol working above him, and the sounds of their voices are soothing, the steady thunks as they put down metal, shore up their defenses. It almost puts him to sleep.   
  
Until he hears Hershel, actually angry for maybe only the second time Daryl's heard, yell "Glenn!"

Daryl doesn't come out. He can't. They're too far away to hear everything but every so often something drifts over, a voice raised for emphasis, a trick of the wind.   
  
" - Woodbury -"  
  
" - No, just -"  
  
" - sit on my hands -"

" - got the crap beat out of you, Maggie was attacked -"

Daryl doesn't want to stay here, hidden under the stairs, but he doesn't know how he could leave without being seen. He knows where this is going and it is nowhere Daryl wants to be. 

"Are you saying this was my fault?"  
  
"No -"  
  
Daryl knows what's coming next. It's not Glenn's fault, it's Will's, and by association, Daryl's. 

"I did what I could!"   
  
Daryl blinks. By the time he notices he stopped listening, the conversation has moved forward.  
  
"This rage is going to get you killed."  
  
"With Rick wandering Crazytown, I'm the next in charge." Glenn gets in the car.

"What are you proving?"

Daryl knows what he's proving. He's proving that they're safe here, that they can be safe somewhere. He's proving that if he cares enough and fights hard enough, if he's willing to do anything, nothing bad will happen to Maggie again. He's proving that if you kill a thing it stops having power over you, if you beat it, if you win, then it can't touch you anymore. 

Daryl doesn't know if any of those things are possible to prove. 

* * *

Hershel limps off and it's quiet in the courtyard. Daryl counts to six thousand and comes out. No one is there.   
  
He goes back into the cell block. Beth is cradling Judith and trying to fill a bottle at the same time. Without saying anything, he takes the bottle from her and pours the formula in. Hands it back.   
  
"Thanks," Beth says. "You hungry? I was just about to make my daddy something."  
  
"Naw," he mumbles. "Kin take the kicker, if you want." He reaches for her, but Beth shakes her head.   
  
"No, Maggie's going to - sorry," she says, and brushes some hair out of her face. "Just - I think it'd do Maggie some good to - yeah." She nods.   
  
Daryl nods too. Yeah. Maybe. Beth disappears and he sits in the common room. He picks up some of the chalk they were drawing maps with earlier and toys with it. It makes his hands pale, like there's no blood left in them, like he's a walker. He throws down the chalk and rubs his hands on his pants. Better.   
  
Beth comes back and goes over to the big cook pot. "You sure?" she asks. She seems lighter. She smiles at Daryl. "I'm getting the hang of cooking stuff that isn't squirrel."  
  
"Don' lose practice," he mumbles. "Canned shit runs out. Ain't never gonna run outta squirrels in Georgia."  
  
She's grinning at him when they hear the gunshots.

* * *

He can see the Governor from where he, Beth, and Carl are hiding. They tore out so fast they didn't even get the good guns - Daryl has his bow, and Beth and Carl have handguns, but at this distance they're going to have to aim careful and their magazines don't have anywhere near enough bullets. He can hear Carol screaming and he tries to focus on it as a good thing - it means, behind the bloody mess that used to be Axel, she's still alive.   
  
He'll take what he can get as he aims, shoots, but the Governor's men are hiding behind the open doors of a car and he can't get anything good. Carl and Beth are trying for the sniper on the watchtower, but theoretically Daryl can get more distance, so he tries to pepper arrows at them, to distract them, but he can't tell if he's even making a dent. Rick is out there somewhere, Michonne, Hershel, but Daryl can't see them - everyone hit the dirt when the firing started, and he's grateful for tall grass. 

And then the firing dies down and Daryl is terrified as to what that means. Why would the Governor stop if he hadn't already gotten what he wanted?  
  
But then Maggie is there, dangling with guns, heading straight for Beth, and the gunfire starts up again but they're armed now, for real, and Maggie lays down cover fire and then Carol is up - bloody but up and running and then she is armed too, and then he thinks they're gonna be all right.   
  
Until the truck full of walkers blasts through their defenses.

The Governor and his men are leaving and Daryl wonders why - why wouldn't they stay and at least watch the outcome of their attack. But he realizes that they've done more than just drop a truck full of walkers on their front step. The gunfight must have drawn them for miles around. And their front gate is gone.   
  
He sees a white haired head poke out of the grass and his heart freezes. There's about a million walkers between him and Hershel and he starts firing with his bow, gets a couple, but he can't hardly make a dent. As he shoots, he hears a car driving down the dirt road - are they coming back? Already?   
  
But it's Glenn and he's coming back, with the Governor gone they're all running down to the top of the field to meet him - taking out as many walkers as they can, Daryl sees the gleaming whirl of Michonne and her sword, but Hershel's still so far and where is Rick?   
  
He hears yelling from the other end of the fence, from down near the water, but he can't even look as he focuses on walker after walker. Hershel is hobbling as fast as he can, gun clenched in one hand, for Glenn's car, and Glenn is out and fighting too and then he and Michonne have Hershel. 

The rest of them fall back to the gate, let the car in, seal it up. The inner courtyard is still clear, which is something. Hershel and Michonne and Glenn hop out - Maggie kissing her father quickly, "You okay?" and him saying "Yes, baby." Everyone is taking stock - Axel there, dead on the ground, shot through with so many bullets his identifying features have all but been erased, even that stupid mustache. Daryl feels a pang. No one else seems injured - but Rick is still missing, Rick was outside the gate, they'll have to -

But then there's a whistle, sharp, coming from the other side of the fence. Daryl squints - it's hard to see through the walkers shambling through the previously cleared field.   
  
"I've come," someone shouts, "for my boy."  
  
Rick is standing outside the gate, bloody, gripping his gun like a bludgeon in his hand. And next to him, the end of his metal stump shining with blood, is Will Dixon.


	13. I Ain't A Judas

They lock him in D Block. Literally lock him - he's in a cell that's locked in a block that's locked, and Daryl can't hear him or see him from where he is. Carol had started pulling him inside almost before the words were out of his dad's mouth, and he'd struggled.  
  
"He - Carol, he's got Rick, I gotta - you gotta make the trade, I -"  
  
"He's not a hostage," Carol says, still liberally spattered with blood. "I saw them, during the fight, they were working together. And no way are we sending you out into that mess." 

Daryl thinks that fighting walkers together doesn't mean they won't fight each other quick as soon as the walkers have gone, but he lets Carol drag him inside. She brings him to her cell - the little asskicker is asleep in the post office carton on the floor, like she missed everything - and parks him there and tells him to watch Judith and she'll be right back.   
  
He knows they're out there to figure out what to do with Will Dixon, and he knows he should be out there too. His father has come for him - something that fills him with simultaneous fear and gladness. His father had never gone back for him in Atlanta, had never missed him the time he got lost in the woods for nine days. But he had come for him now.   
  
It doesn't mean a lot, Daryl knows. But it's more than he's ever had before.   
  
He doesn't want to go with him exactly - that's an entirely different story, and even though he still feels mixed up and guilty from the other day, he doesn't know that he's full on delusional. Being alone on the road with Will Dixon would kill him, one way or the other. But still. He came.   
  
And he can't let his dad kill Rick. When he thinks about that, it makes him anxious, his breathing fast. Rick is fucked up right now but Rick has been good to him. To all of them. The others shouldn't even think about not making the trade. Like Daryl's anxiety is catching, Judith starts crying - her fat little feet, in their dumbass onesie, drum against the sides of the box and her face screws up and she wails.   
  
Daryl's never had to stop her from crying before. He's held her plenty, probably as much as Carl has, even though every time she feels so little in his arms he worries he's going to drop her. But mostly she's been sleeping, happy, or maybe a little fussy - not this full on wail, like a siren, her face turning red. What is something is really wrong? What if she's sick?  
  
Daryl scoops her up carefully and she doesn't stop crying, although her cries do change tone. Now she just sounds miserable and out of sorts. He pats her back tentatively. "S'matter, asskicker? You hungry?" Maggie had just fed her, Daryl remembers, right before the gunfire. "Girl, you jus' ate - greedy!" He knows the other thing to check for is the diaper - he sort of pokes at her ass, but it feels dry. "What's wrong?" he says, bouncing her a little in his arms, careful not to do too much. She seems to sigh and her wailing starts to fade out. "This? This what you want?" He jiggles her again and she makes that weird little click in the back of her throat, like a grunt but cuter. "A'right. Y'sure?" But Judith's eyes are closing again and her breathing seems to settle into something deep and even.   
  
He stays like that for a while, not sure if she's asleep or just resting, and while he's holding her, he - it's not that he forgets about Will. He doesn't think he could, but somehow Will doesn't matter as much, because he's not in here and if he starts to worry again, the little asskicker might be able to tell and then she'll be crying and that's no good for anybody. So it stays there, not quite real, until Carol comes for him.   
  
"She was crying," he explains when he sees her, and she comes over and takes Judith from him, slowly, careful not to wake her.   
  
"Well. She's not crying now. Are you, ladybug?" Judith just keeps sleeping.   
  
Carol tucks her back into her bootleg crib and turns to Daryl.   
  
"S'okay," he says quickly. "I get it. We need Rick. Well, y'all do. An' he's -" Daryl shrugs. "I don't mind. I get it. Jus' can I say goodbye to -"  
  
"You're not going anywhere," Carol says firmly, and Daryl sits back.   
  
"But - he'll kill him."  
  
"He won't. Rick is inside right now. He's fine." A wash of relief, followed by almost - disappointment? He's not disappointed he isn't going with his father, but he is disappointed his dad caved so easy. "Now, I don't want you to worry."   
  
Immediately, Daryl's hackles are up. Saying that makes him at least a thousand times more worried than he would be if she hadn't said it.   
  
"Your father is here too. Not here!" she says quickly as Daryl finds himself pulling back, almost like he's hiding. He feels his face flush and he can't tell if it's embarrassment or anger."We put him in D. He's locked in."  
  
The unspoken words, 'he can't get you,' make him feel sick with relief and shame and anger, again, making his arms and legs tingle. He scowls at Carol.  
  
"So?"  
  
"So. They made a deal." He can tell by looking at her what Carol thinks of his deal. "He followed the Governor here. Says they're gearing up for something big there. Said he'd tell us what he knows, but -"  
  
"But he wants me," Daryl finished. He looks to the side, spits, doesn't even care he's inside. Maybe it's a sign of the extremity of the situation that Carol doesn't scold him for it.   
  
"I already told him. He can't have you."

"I ain't some fuckin' toy or somethin' y'all can trade around when y'feel like it," Daryl growls. He hates this. He hates it.   
  
"Of course you aren't. You don't have to have any part of this. This is not your problem."  
  
"Maggie and Glenn'll never let 'im stay here."  
  
Carol nods. "Rick's biding his time. He can't stay long term, he can't take you with him. He tells us anything, we'll take it, but if he doesn't - it doesn't matter. We've got Rick back, we've got him locked up, we've got you and Maggie and Glenn safe. Everything is going to be okay."  
  
Daryl doesn't know how that's possible when Will Dixon is somewhere in the prison.

* * *

They have a fucking group meeting about it. Of course they do. Rick seems back - or mostly back. He's got a weird look in his eye still, but he only talks to people who are there, and that's a start. When Daryl and Carol get there, Hershel has just finished saying something to Rick, and Rick's got his jaw clenched and won't look at him. Hershel's face is red. 

"I put my family's life in your hands. There are children's lives in your hands. So get your head clear and do something!"

Carol and Daryl slip in behind Maggie and Glenn. From the common room, D Block is close. Daryl wonders if his dad can hear anything from them.   
  
Maggie and Glenn are the most vocal, after Hershel's said his piece.   
  
"- tried to kill us -"  
  
"- started this -"

"Randall all over again -"  
  
"- wouldn't ask you to live with Shane after he tried -"  
  
"Enough!" Rick bursts out. He runs his hands through his hair, shakes them out. "But what are we meant to do? We set him free, it's like we killed him ourselves."  
  
"Good riddance," Glenn spits, then he looks chagrined. Darts a glance at Daryl. Daryl tries not to move.   
  
"He's got information and he'll give it to us. We need him. Just until this business with the Governor is over. Then we'll cut him loose. But we let him go now, he'll run straight back to them - he's been inside now, we can't let him -"  
  
"And whose fault is that!" Glenn yells. He's red faced and angry, but he and Maggie are sitting next to each other again, touching each other, which is enough progress for one day. Even if he liked it better when he wasn't scared of Glenn.   
  
"Saved my life out there, what was I meant to do? Turn around and bash his brains in with my gun? With that knife on his arm?"  
  
"You were meant to think about the good of the whole group instead of what's best for just you!"   
  
"I am! He's information. It's more than we had before."  
  
"What if we gave him back to the Governor?" Glenn says. "I mean, he was trying to execute Will too, right? That's what you all said. If we brought him back, give him his traitor, ask for a truce - a sign of good faith, maybe - "  
  
Maggie says what Daryl's thinking. "There's no good faith there. Not for us."

"Wouldn't get us anything anyway except losing our best lead," Rick says. "Look - you think I want him here? I almost killed him back in Woodbury. I want to put a bullet in his head for what he's done to our people." Rick's eyes pause on Maggie, on Glenn. On Daryl. "But we don't have a lot of options here. Governor wants this prison. Doesn't even want it to live in, according to Will - just wants to burn us out. Eliminate us." Rick has retaken the groups attention, but there is something there that wasn't there before - an uncomfortable undertone, running through each one of them, making them look around for the threat. But Rick is making sense right here, Daryl thinks. His dad is dangerous. They can't just let him loose.   
  
"We'll deal with the Governor," Rick says firmly. "Then we'll deal with Will." It's weird to hear them all calling his dad by his first name, like they're friends. But it'd be weirder (and worse) to hear them call him Dixon. Rick is looking at Daryl, at Glenn and Maggie, at, strangely, Carol. "No one goes in to see him but me and Hershel. Clear?"  
  
Silence.  
  
"I mean it. Nobody but me or Hershel. We get the information we need and we leave him alone. Nothing else. Hear?"  
  
Daryl sneaks a peek at Hershel's face. He's looking at Rick, dissatisfied, angry, and Daryl wonders why Rick thinks Hershel is to be trusted alone with Will anymore than Glenn.   
  


* * *

Carl's no tracker, but he's as quick as Daryl sometimes, light on his feet. He knows the prison better than anybody by now - running to the infirmary for Hershel that first day, clearing the tombs, scavenging around. It shouldn't be a surprise that he knows a way to D Block that the others don't know.   
  
Rick disappears outside with binoculars - hopefully just on watch and not looking for ghosts. Daryl's not as certain of that as he'd like to be. Carl follows him after a minute, but he comes back not too long after, mouth set in a mulish line. Daryl's sitting on the second level, legs dangling over the edge. He's trying to repair his bolts, but his focus isn't great. Carl doesn't sneak up on him, but it's still a surprise when Carl parks down next to him, dangles his own legs over the side.   
  
"He shouldn't be the leader anymore."  
  
Daryl cuts a glance at Carl, then looks back at his arrow. Shrugs. "He's done all right by us."  
  
"But _he_ isn't all right. He can't do it. Not now. He needs to get better first."  
  
"Ain't like we got any other options." Hershel's a good man, but he's old and frail and missing a leg. Plus he's soft. Not as soft as he used to be, but he wants to believe things can still be good. Rick doesn't, and that's safer. Glenn, he would have thought, would be better - at seeing all the moving pieces, at making a plan - but after how he'd been acting, after the Governor, Daryl isn't sure of him either. It's not that he doesn't think Carol could do it - she could, he knows she could lead. But he's not sure the others know that enough to follow. Not yet.   
  
"Hershel could do it. Him and Glenn together." Carl puffs out a sigh. "I wish I could do it. Or you. We'd be better. If we were big enough."   
  
Daryl thinks about what it would mean, to lead. He can't see it. Shrugs. "Well. We ain't."  
  
"Yeah." A long moment. Carl swings his legs. "Do you - want to see him?"  
  
Daryl freezes on the bolt. Carl and he had never spoken about his dad. He knew Carl could probably remember him, from the camp outside Atlanta, but they'd never interacted much - Will Dixon wasn't a kid person, and by the time he was gone, Rick was back and they had other things on their mind.   
  
"Naw," he says. "Talked to him a'ready. At Woodbury."  
  
Carl's legs still. "What if you didn't have to talk to him? Would you want to see him?"  
  
Daryl shrugs. Would he? He doesn't know. "Your dad said. Nobody but him an' Hershel."

At that, Carl shifts slightly. Holds out his hand.   
  
Cradled there in his palm, the ring of keys.

* * *

How is it that Carl is the one that's the bad influence on him?   
  
They come out on the upper level. Carl is guiding them forward when he freezes all of a sudden, so fast Daryl barely has time to avoid running into him.   
  
He doesn't need to ask why. He can hear it, coming from the floor below. Voices.   
  
"Hershel," Carl breathes, and the two of them duck down. Hershel must be directly beneath them - there's no way he could see them. But still. 

"- otherwise occupied," Hershel is saying. "I can -"  
  
"Occupied with what? Diddlin' my kid?"  
  
Daryl flinches.   
  
"If you truly believed that," Hershel says in a measured voice, "You would never have let Rick come back in here alive."  
  
A silence. Will spits. 

"How'd you lose it?"  
  
"I was bit."  
  
"Bit?" It's weird to hear Will sound impressed, even if it is grudging. "You hack it off yourself, old man?"  
  
"No. Rick did."  
  
"Awful kindly of him," Will sneers. "Guess we're a little club, ain't we? Guys missin' limbs because of Rick Grimes."  
  
"He saved my life. Gave me more time with my girls. Gave me more time with your son." Daryl can hardly breathe. "Can't put a price on that."  
  
Will spits again. "Gave you more time with 'im, stole time from me. Ain't what I call right."  
  
"The way you treated that boy isn't what I'd call right." Daryl can hear the anger in Hershel's voice, but he wonders if his dad can notice it. Will laughs.   
  
"Look here, geezer - you mighta spent the whole winter gettin' cozy with Daryl, but that is my blood kin. Maybe the last blood I have left in this world. You don't know nothin' about us, 'bout the way we live. You think I don't care about that boy?"

It's the first time his father has ever expressed even the possibility of caring for Daryl that Daryl remembers.  
  
"No," Hershel says quietly. "I'm sure you do, somewhere. I just think you don't have the first clue what care is supposed to look like."  
  
"That boy is mine."  
  
"He isn't."

"Whose is he then? Fuckin' Sheriff Rick? The chink? You?"  
  
"He belongs to himself. He always has."

Daryl isn't sure that's true. He belonged to his father, before all of this happened. Like property, or someone would have taken him away. The state, the cops, Child Services. Merle. If he'd belonged to himself he could have run to the woods and stayed there by himself and no one would have cared. But he belonged to his father. Wasn't anything anyone could do. And he's not sure he really belongs only to himself either.  
  
He belongs to the group now. And he doesn't mind that.

"I ain't tellin' you pricks nothin' till I can see him."  
  
"That isn't going to happen."  
  
"Y'can't keep my boy from me. He'll come to me. You'll see."

"That'd be up to him. Not you."

"Y'all warped him somethin' awful, I can tell. My boy wouldn't leave his daddy on the side of the road y'hadn't done somethin' to him. He knows his duty."   
  
"He does." A pause. "I won't let you hurt that boy."  
  
"Daryl ain't no weak ass pansy fuck like y'all. He can take care of hisself."  
  
"You're not listening to me. I won't let you hurt that boy. Do you understand? If I have to kill you myself, I'm not letting that happen."  
  
Will laughs again. "Yeah? Whatcha gonna do? Beat me to death with your crutch? Kick me with your one fuckin' leg?"  
  
"You don't want to know what I'll do."  
  
Daryl shivers, and even Will seems to sense something. His voice gets quiet.   
  
"Maybe Sheriff Rick ain't the only one puttin' his hands on Daryl. Y'all are fuckin' sick, man, messin' with my kid -"  
  
"What's sick," Hershel says fiercely, "is that someone molesting him is the only way you could understand someone else loving him."   
  
The door to the cell block clangs open, and Daryl and Carl jump. Beth comes in, messy ponytail half coming out. Daryl inches backwards, feels Carl scooting too, keeping out of sight.  
  
"Daddy, Maggie's on watch, she said -"  
  
"Coming," Hershel says quickly, cutting her off. Daryl hears the crutches scraping against the floor as Hershel hoists himself up.   
  
"Pretty fuckin' girl you have there." If he's trying to provoke Hershel, he doesn't succeed, but Daryl can imagine Hershel's hands tightening on the crutches, holding himself back. Will seems to realize that tactic won't work, because his voice raises. "Y'best bring my boy to me!"   
  
Hershel doesn't answer, and neither does Beth. And then the cell is clanging again and they're gone.   
  
"C'mon," Carl whispers. "We better see what's up."  
  
And they go. And Daryl tries not to think about his father, locked in one of the cells underneath them.   
  
Waiting for Daryl to come. 

* * *

It's Andrea. She gets to the gate at the same time as Daryl and Carl get outside, guns up. Carol has her own gun trained from behind a car, looks over at them. "Where've the two of you been?"  
  
"Andrea?" Carl asks, which Daryl thinks is a pretty good deflection. "What's she - "  
  
"We don't know. Careful. She might not be alone."  
  
The last time he saw Andrea, she'd hugged him and told him the Governor would fix everything. He hadn't see her at the execution - she could have been there but he's been too busy getting gut punched by his dad and avoiding walkers that he hadn't paid much attention to the crowd. She seems taken aback not to be greeted with open arms, but she's just had to wade through the Governor's work - why would she think she'd be welcome? They'd been together at the beginning, but the beginning was a long time ago. A lot has changed.   
  
Even her.   
  
Carol is the only one who hugs her. He remembers Carol on the back of the dirt bike, clinging to him as they rode away from the farm. Remembers how none of them went back for Andrea. It's not enough to make him feel bad for her, but it does make it more complicated.   
  
Everything was complicated enough. He wishes something would just be simple, for once. Would be clear. 

They go to the common room, but no one is comfortable enough to sit. Not even Hershel. Which makes Andrea notice him quick.   
  
"Hershel, my god," she breathes, and looks horrified. Daryl guesses it is sort of horrifying, but the alternative would be so much worse.   
  
"Where's Shane?"  
  
Daryl flinches. Can't stop himself.   
  
"And Lori?"  
  
Why ask when you know the answer? If they weren't here, they were gone. That much should have been obvious.   
  
"Carl," Andrea says, takes a step forward. But Carl doesn't blink. Looks at Andrea like she's a stranger.   
  
Which she is. Which is how Daryl looks at her too.   
  
"Daryl. Are you all right? I didn't -"  
  
"Don't talk to him," Rick barks, and Andrea looks like she's been slapped.   
  
"Rick, I - I'm not an enemy, I'm -"

"We had that field and courtyard cleared, until your boyfriend -"  
  
"He said you fired first!"  
  
"Well, he's lying."

"Killed an inmate who survived in here," Hershel says, hard. "We liked him."  
  
"Was one of us," Daryl mumbles, just to make it clear. Andrea had been one of them. That doesn't mean she was anymore.

"I had no idea. As soon as I found out what happened, I came. I didn't even know Daryl was in Woodbury until after the first attack, and Phillip said he was with terrorists, I had no idea he meant - I didn't even know you were alive until I saw Rick during the shoot out."  
  
"That was days ago," Glenn says, his mottled face looking fierce.   
  
"I told you, I came as soon as I could." She spins on Michonne. "What have you told them?"  
  
Michonne hadn't told them much of anything. They'd gotten most of it from Glenn, from Maggie. From Daryl. Maybe from Will.   
  
"I left Atlanta with you people and now I'm the odd man out?"  
  
"He almost have killed Michonne and he would have killed us -"  
  
"That was Will Dixon! When Phillip found out he cut him loose, he was going to -"  
  
"And who was Will serving, huh?" Glenn shoots back. "Which should have told you something right there! You remember him from Atlanta, you remember what a crazy son of a bitch he was, how he treated Daryl -"  
  
Now Andrea is looking at Daryl again and he looks away. He can see it in her face, her realization, and it's too late for him to feel anything but anger about.   
  
If she'd figured this out when he was in the Governor's office, she could have gotten him out of there herself, and maybe they wouldn't be holding his father prisoner right now.  
  
"Daryl - that morning after the attack, the - did your - did Will do that?"   
  
"I said don't talk to him," Rick barks again.   
  
"Look - I cannot excuse or explain what Phillip has done. But I'm here trying to bring us together. I'm trying to work this out -"  
  
"There's nothing to work out," Rick says. "We're gonna kill him."  
  
And in the end, that's that. 

* * *

They aren't the Governor. They give her a car, give her back her gun. She looks at them through the windows of the car, smeared with dirt and dust, and she looks at them like she wants something from them, needs something. But they don't have anything else to give her. A car and a gun is a lot today. And it's all they have.   
  
Daryl wonders how she thought this all would go.   
  
They watch her drive away and head back inside. He heads back to his perch and notices Carol is following him. He turns.   
  
"What?"  
  
"I don't know where you and Carl were today. But I can make a pretty good guess."  
  
He scowls, looks away. "Din't do nothin'."  
  
He feels her come close to him and looks back. Her eyes are blue and wide and too full of understanding.   
  
"Be careful," she says. "He's your father, but he's not good for you." He feels his scowl deepen, crosses his arms tight across his chest. She thinks he needs her to tell him that, when he's the one beat to shit?   
  
And she kisses his forehead. He feels his arms loosen a little. Looks back up at her.   
  
She smiles at him - small, sad. "I know," she says.   
  
And leaves him on his perch. 


	14. Arrow on the Doorpost

He thought Rick and Michonne and Carl being gone would be a good chance to talk to his dad, but it isn't. Hershel's got eyes on him everywhere he goes, and Carol loads him up with chores - stuff that needed doing, getting ready for war, so he doesn't think she's deliberately trying to keep him away from his dad, but it probably is a nice side effect. He doesn't know what Hershel would do if he tried to go, and he doesn't want to know. He doesn't want Hershel to think less of him or anything. So he waits and figures the time will come soon enough. 

He's not sure himself why he wants to go. Doesn't know what he thinks he'll get from it. Probably nothing, maybe worse. He can't imagine what good would come but somehow D Block still calls him, like a magnet to metal. He finds his feet pointing that way and has to force himself onward every time. A time will come soon enough, when he can get there. Or it won't, and that will be it's own kind of message. 

His chance comes when they go to deal with the Governor. Hershel and Rick and Glenn go. Daryl looks at Hershel as he duct tapes a gun to his knee and bites his tongue. He wants to say Rick shouldn't take Hershel, should take Daryl instead, that Daryl will do more good. But then he thinks about seeing the Governor, about seeing his men, thinks of him saying to Hershel that he's weak, thinks about hearing Rick tell him no, tell him he's too young. So he keeps quiet.

Plus, it'll be easier to get to D Block with all of them gone. 

He's sitting in his bunk with his new bow. Michonne had brought it to him when they got back from wherever they'd been. He'd been sitting at the table closest to D Block, watching Hershel and chewing his thumbnail, when Michonne sat down next to him. 

"Got you something," she says. And she'd plunked down the bow.

It was nicer than anything Daryl'd ever been given. He let himself touch it hesitantly, then pulled his hand back. 

"Should go in the armory. With the others."

"No one's going to use it but you," she said. "Take it." She reached into a bag at her hip, pulled out an arching cat made of what looked like papier mache in a million different colors. Like if a rainbow threw up in a trash can of newspaper. It's the ugliest thing Daryl's ever seen. "It's a day for presents."

So he's sitting in his bunk, with his bow, and Carl comes in and he jumps. 

"Nice," Carl says. He leans against the bars. "Carol wants you."

Daryl rolls his eyes, but gets up. Swings the new bow over his shoulder. It jostles his back a little, but not too bad. He'd been telling Hershel the truth - he'd had a lot worse. This isn't hardly anything. 

"Hey, uh - you still got them keys?" he asks Carl, looking anywhere but at the other boy. He doesn't know that he's ashamed exactly, but he'd be a lot more comfortable if the other boy didn't know where he was going. 

"I - yeah, but -" Carl looks conflicted. "You can't - my dad said no one but him and Hershel are allowed in there."

Daryl stares incredulously at him. "Are you shittin' me? You're the one took me there last time!"

"Yeah, but - last time we were together. We were just looking. I don't know if - "

"What makes you think I'm gonna do anythin' more'n look?"

Carl shrugs uncomfortably. "I just - I can't, man. Don't ask me."

"What, you think I'm gonna let him out or somethin'?" Daryl asks, and at the look on Carl's face he freezes. "You do think that."

"No! No, Daryl, of course not, I don't - but he's your dad. If my dad were locked up and I could get him out, I'd -"

"He ain't like your dad," Daryl spits. "Man, fuck you. Forget it." He pushes past Carl. 

"Daryl! Come on, Daryl, wait, I don't mean it like - okay, okay!"

Daryl turns around. Carl is looking desperate, and he's holding the keys in his hand, holding them out to Daryl. Daryl takes a quick look around and steps forward, closing the gap between them - he doesn't want anyone to see them messing with the keys. 

"Jus' - c'mon," Daryl mumbles. "You kin let me in." 

The relief on Carl's face is insulting, but Daryl pushes it down. He doesn't want to let his dad out. He just wants to let himself in. Plus, he probably shouldn't take the keys anyway - what if they need them, what if something happens while he's there? 

Plus, he knows he wouldn't want to let his dad out. But he wouldn't put it past his dad to try and make him. Maybe it's better not to have the option.

"What about Carol?"

"Tell her - tell her I'll be there in a minute." She'd know where he went, probably. But he didn't mind her knowing as much. He wonders if she'd want to talk to Ed if she saw him now, or if she'd walk the other way. He wonders if she knows which she'd do. She'll let him talk. And if Carl tells her he'll be there soon, then she'll know he'll come to her. 

And she'll know where he went if he doesn't come back. 

He makes himself calm down. His dad is locked up. He can't make him do anything. And Daryl can leave whenever he wants. He'll be fine. 

Carl lets him into the block and hesitates. "Should I - lock you back in?"

Daryl bites at his thumb. Shit. If he didn't lock him in then if something happened, if the cell block wasn't secure, then C Block wouldn't be secure either. But if Carl did, it meant he'd be stuck here until Carl came back. 

"I'll leave it open," Carl says, and Daryl shakes his head. 

"Naw. You should - lock me in." The thought of it makes his skin crawl. "Come'n - get me in fifteen minutes, a'right?"

"I'll be back in ten." And then the door is clanging shut and locking behind him.

* * *

He wonders if this is how Merle felt when he went to prison - anxious, antsy. The door is going to open again but the trapped feeling settles around Daryl's shoulders, tightens his throat. He's stuck in here until Carl comes back, and Daryl hates being stuck.   
  
He's quiet on the stairs as he goes down to the lower level. He's glad he and Carl snuck in the other way - glad he has a minute to calm himself, glad that Carl and his dad won't lock eyes on each other. He takes a breath when he hits the bottom and looks in the cell.   
  
Will Dixon's bloodshot eyes look back at him.   
  
"Well, well, well," Will drawls. He's still got his metal arm on, but they've taken the knife away. There's a book in the cell - Daryl thinks maybe a bible - but his dad is looking at a porn magazine when Daryl walks up. He feels himself blushing, and his dad looks up at him and scoffs.   
  
"Y'always were a fuckin' prude." He tosses the magazine down and looks at Daryl. Sneers. "Prev'ous occupant left a little somethin' behind. Lucky for me." He spits, looks Daryl up and down. "Whatcha want?"  
  
Daryl feels wrong footed, thick tongued. He thought he'd show up here and be able to speak, but words have always fucked him up and now, when he needs them most, they're gone. And his father doesn't seem like he even wants to see him.   
  
There's no point, Daryl realizes. There's no point to this.   
  
He's wondering if he can catch Carl when his father interrupts his thought.   
  
"Already tol' them, ain't no point to them goin' out there to negotiate. Gov don't negotiate. He takes or he burns. Thas' all. But nobody ever listens to ol' Will." He narrows his eyes. "You want to survive this, y'best git out of here while you got time. Go through the woods, put some distance. 'Cause he find you, he'll kill you."  
  
"An' he won't kill you?"  
  
Will laughs. "Fuck no, boy, I'm like a cockroach. Ain't nothin' can kill me. Your man Rick already tried," and he waves the metal stump around. "We see how that did for him, don't we?"  
  
"He ain't the one in the cage."  
  
And his father's mood is gone like that and he's up, one hand gripping the bars. "Don't you fuckin' sass me, boy. I may be locked up but I am still your goddamn father."  
  
Daryl nods. He'd made sure to keep clear of the bars, to keep back, and he knows there's no way will can get him. But he feels himself jerk backwards, ever so slightly, when his father advances.   
  
"Your man Hershel a'ready been by. The mouse too."  
  
He doesn't know who his father's talking about and it must show on his face, because his dad snorts and says "You know. Ed's bitch."  
  
"Carol." Carol?  
  
"Came one night in the dark, thought I was about to get a little conjugal visit. But she just tol' me not to underestimate her." Will bares his teeth. "I mess with you, she'll slit my throat in my sleep."   
  
Daryl doesn't say anything. He's not sure he can.  
  
"Underestimate her, damn. Never gave two shits 'bout her till she came threatenin'. Needs Ed to keep her in line, bitch is fuckin' crazy -"  
  
"She ain't!" Daryl is loud, louder than he thought, and his fists are clenched and if he weren't wary of being close, he'd have popped his dad one. 

"Boy, what's wrong with you? You actin' like these people give a shit 'bout you! Let me tell you, they don't."  
  
"Do."  
  
Will spits. It lands near Daryl's foot. "They care they can use you. Them bunch ain't never fired a weapon in their lives 'fore the geeks came, ain't never had to hunt, ain't never had to fight for nothin'. Don't know shit. You do. Course they're gonna keep y'round. Thought I raised you smarter'n this."  
  
"Y'always said I was stupid."  
  
Will ignores him. "Thought I taughtcha a little somethin' 'bout how the world works. Ain't nobody give up nothin' for free. They need shit from you an' they'll pay for it however cheap they can. You're the one's so shit stupid you're givin' it up for free for a pat on the head from Sheriff Rick and scraps."  
  
His dad is wrong. It's a thought that is shocking not because it is new - his dad has been wrong a lot, about a lot of things - but because Daryl has been thinking these thoughts to himself for months, at night, in the quiet of the dark, in moments of doubt. But hearing them come out of his father's mouth makes it clearer. It's wrong. It's all wrong.  
  
"I'm tellin' you, you get yourself a gun, some supplies, you rob 'em blind one night and you git. Hell, ain't even stealin'. You fought for that stuff same as them and they been leanin' on you for months. Y'earned it. Get the fuck outta dodge while you can."  
  
"Why didn't you come back?" The question is out of his mouth before he even knows he's asking it, and Will stares at him like he's crazy.   
  
"Y'fuckin' blind, boy? How the hell'd I end up locked up in here I didn't come back for you? Wadn't gonna let no perverts -"  
  
"In Atlanta." Will quiets at that, scowls. "At the camp. You took the cube van. You coulda come back."  
  
Will's face is sour and he hisses, "Boy, what do you fuckin' want from me? I lost my goddamn hand!"  
  
"I'm your son." It's quiet, almost a whisper, but it doesn't feel weak to say it. The words feel strange in his mouth, though. They don't fit.   
  
"Yeah, an' I thought my son'd be smarter than to go off runnin' the second I turned my back! You hadna run, I'd a been back for you!"  
  
"You went back?" Did he? It feels unbelievable. But then, he'd done it just now - tracked the prison down, turned up for him.   
  
"Woulda been soon - was workin' on the Gov. If you'd a stayed put -"  
  
"You didn't." Will's face is ugly, but Daryl pushes forward. "We went back for you, T-Dog and Glenn and Rick and me -"  
  
"Sure the ricemuncher and the spearchucker tried real fuckin' hard -"  
  
"You the one who left, not me! We waited two days to break that camp and y'never showed! What was I s'posed to do - stay there alone and hope you'd come back? With the walkers coming?"  
  
"You were s'posed to be strong enough to take care a yourself, steada throwin' yourself onto the first weaklings y'saw -"  
  
"They ain't weak." They aren't. What they did, what they tried to do, was so much harder than anything Will had done. They tried, in their own way, to be good. That meant something, even as it got harder and harder to succeed. Maybe especially since then.   
  
"They're weak and they're makin' you weak. Wadn't like that with me. I made you strong."  
  
Daryl looks at Will and sees he really believes this. "Y'didn't."  
  
"Boy, you don' know the first thing about it. You think growin' up with your grandaddy was some kinda picnic? Think he never whupped me none? Think I went around cryin' like a little bitch to fuckin' old men and crazy ass ladies? Boo hoo, my daddy ain't nice to me, din't buy me a fuckin' cake for my birthday. Fuck that! He din't need to like me, I wadn't his friend. I was his boy and it was his job to teach me to make my own goddamn way in the world and he sure as shit did. An' I taught that to you, and Merle, and lookatcha. The only things give you value are the things I taughtcha. Y'think they'd like you half as much you didn't feed them?"

"I ain't like you."  
  
Will snarls. "Y'sure ain't. Wish Merle'd been there when this shit went down. Merle woulda been of some use. Not some goddamn weight tied round my ankles."  
  
Daryl misses Merle then, powerfully. He wishes Merle'd been there too. But if Merle had been, he'd have never ended up with Rick's group. And in that moment, Daryl wonders which way is worth it, before he pushes the thought aside. It doesn't matter. Because it didn't happen that way. It happened this way. It's the only way it happened. And so all Daryl can do is move forward.   
  
"If y'want them to let you go - y'better tell 'em somethin'," Daryl mumbles.   
  
"Or what? They'll keep me here in Shangri-fuckin'-la? Hell, I got jackin' material, I got three hots and a cot, I got everythin' I need here. And when the Gov comes, he'll let me out."  
  
"He tried to kill you too."  
  
Will falters a little at that. "He'll come 'round. Or he won't and I'll make my own goddamn way. I always do. Know how to land on my feet."  
  
Daryl nods. He turns to go.   
  
"Daryl!" 

He stops at the stairs. Doesn't turn around. But then he does. His 

"Don' be stupid. These people - they'll cut y'loose, when you're no good to 'em. They ain't blood."   
  
Daryl doesn't look much like Will. Will and Merle are two peas in a pod, the spitting image, something that Merle used to literally spit at. Daryl looks like their mother, he guesses. He can't really remember anymore. But looking at Will now, Daryl scours his face so something they share - a chin, an ear, the set of their jaw.

He can't see anything.   
  
"I'm your kin, and I'm tellin' you - get outta here. Now. 'Fore it's too late."  
  
Daryl hears Carl above, hears the keys jangling in the lock, and he takes the stairs quickly.   
  
"Daryl! You listen to me! I'm your father, goddamnit!" He's halfway down the upper level hallway, sees Carl there at the door, holding it open, pale. "Your father!"  
  
"Let's go," Daryl mutters, and Carl slams the door behind them harder than he needs to. The sound echoes through the cell block, echoes through Daryl's ears as they walk back, echoes in his head all afternoon as he sorts munitions, hides caches of bullets, organizes weapons.   
  
Will is his father. But Daryl isn't so sure he's Will's son. 

Not anymore.

* * *

The others get back and look grim.   
  
"He wants the prison," Rick says. "He wants us gone. Dead. He wants us dead. For what we did to Woodbury."  
  
Everyone around looks solemn, determined, nervous. No one looks shocked. Or scared. Is it because they're hiding? Or because, almost a year into the end of the world, they've finally learned that being scared is a waste of energy?   
  
"We're going to war."  
  
 _Get outta here. Now. 'Fore it's too late._  
  
It's too late. War is coming.


	15. This Sorrowful Life

Daryl didn't think he'd go back to D Block. But he can't sleep. He kept waiting for the little asskicker to wake up - then he could go and get her and at least him being awake would be for something. But either she was sleeping like a rock or Carol had heard her crying and gotten her quiet before she could build up a head of steam.   
  
He wasn't going to go down. He wasn't stupid. The talk with his dad had gone as well as it was possible to go, Daryl didn't want to push it. But the past few days, getting ready for war, had his dad's words echoing in his head - _Get outta here. Now. 'Fore it's too late._ It wasn't like he was taking them seriously - Dixon's didn't run, and more than that, he wouldn't. Not after everything.   
  
He wouldn't leave Carol like that. Ever.   
  
But the words keep running around the inside of his brain, a constant loop, because for his dad to say that, for his dad to warn him, that means something, right? He remembers too, his dad and Hershel talking. _You think I don't care about that boy?  
  
_ So he goes. Just to make his head shut up. It's late and it's quiet and he takes the keys with him. It makes him feel better, knowing he can leave whenever he likes. He sets up on the upper level, leans his head against the cool wall of the cells, closes his eyes. He can't hear his dad snoring from up here, but he probably is. It's a sound he remembers from camping trips and from benders, his dad passed out on the couch in the front room as Daryl tiptoes his way through, trying to get to school. He listens harder, trying to find it, and jumps when he hears instead, the clank of the lower cell block door opening.

For a minute he almost panics - his father is escaping, his father is getting out and Daryl is right here and he's going to be so mad - but then he hears the footsteps, the click and springing sound of crutches. It's Hershel. And Rick.   
  
And they're talking, low, Hershel going to sit on the stairs, rubbing his stump. He never acknowledges that it hurts in front of Daryl, and this tiny moment, this sign of weariness, does something to Daryl.   
  
"Didn't want to be overheard -"  
  
"What'm I, a piece a shit?" And Daryl jumps, because Will Dixon is also awake.   
  
"Shut up," Rick shoots back with heat. "You answer my questions and nothing else, you hear me?"  
  
Daryl hears Will spit but before he can answer, Rick has continued. "Governor gave me a choice. A way out. You know him better than any of us - we give him what he wants, we trade, you think he'd honor that?"  
  
Will cracks a laugh, mirthless. "Gov ain't got no honor. And it'd have to be somethin' pretty fuckin' big. Y'all killed his men, made him look weak in front of his people. Man can't stand for that. Not if he wants to stay in command."  
  
"What does he want?" Hershel asks.   
  
"Michonne."  
  
It's silent in the cell block below and Daryl tries not to breathe.   
  
Will grunts. "Well. Might be enough, her. She fucked him up - took his eye, smashed up his place. That shit between her an' Andrea. Yeah. Might do it."  
  
"He'll kill her," Hershel says quietly. "And then kill us anyway."  
  
"What if he doesn't?" Rick asks, and he sounds tormented. "What if this is the answer?"  
  
"Why didn't you want to say this in front of the others?"  
  
"They need to be scared." This is what scares Daryl - hearing Rick talk about Michonne like she's a bargaining chip, hearing Rick talk about manipulating them. They need to be scared.  
  
"They are," Hershel says.   
  
"Good. 'Cause that's the only way they'll accept it."  
  
"She saved my life," Hershel says. "Carl's. Glenn, Maggie - if she hadn't come here, we never would have known they were taken. She's earned her place."   
  
"Yeah. Yeah, she has." Rick isn't arguing and that scares Daryl too. Daryl has earned his place. Will there come a time, like Michonne, when he's worth more to them as an object of trade than as a member of the group? _They ain't your kin._ "Are you willing to sacrifice your daughters' lives for her?"   
  
"Why are you telling me?" Hershel asks. He sounds so old, all of a sudden. 

"Because... I'm hoping you can talk me out of it."

Will laughs again and Daryl jumps - he'd almost forgotten Will was there. "Naw, y'ain't. You want absolution from fuckin' Father Time here."  
  
"I said shut up -"  
  
"Why? You're fuckin' weak, all y'all. Need someone tellin' you what to do, what not to. Need someone to pat your fuckin' hand say, it's okay, baby, you gotta do it, y'ain't got no choice. Y'got choices, Grimes. So make 'em. Y'don't, you're just gonna get everyone in here killed. Includin' my kid."  
  
"Let's go," Hershel says. "You've told me, Rick. You've heard what he has to say. Let's go."  
  
"Ain't heard from everyone," Will says, and Daryl freezes. He can't mean - "Better ask the little rat up there what he thinks. Maybe he can hold your goddamn hand through it."  
  
He hears them shuffle beneath him and thinks about trying to run. But they'll hear him leave and just catch up with him anyway. No point. He steps out into view before they can call him out. Maybe that'll get him somewhere.   
  
"Daryl?" Rick says, and he sounds genuinely shocked. Daryl avoids Hershel's gaze next to him but feels it tracking over him. He goes over to the stairs trying to outpace it, but doesn't go down.   
  
"I - sorry. I wadn't - I was jus' thinkin' -"   
  
"Boy's always been a fuckin' snoop. Creepin' around like a goddamn mouse, listenin' at doors -"  
  
Daryl knows this is true. Listening was the best way to know what was coming, and knowing what was coming was the best way to be ready. He scuffs his foot against the stairs. Finds himself biting his thumb, but tucks it away. His dad hated it when he did that. Like a fucking pussy, some fucking queer -   
  
"You're meant to be in bed," Hershel says quietly.   
  
"Yeah, Daryl," his father drawls maliciously. "Y'broke your curfew, Grandaddy Hershel's gon' hafta -"  
  
One of Hershel's crutches slams against the bars of his father's cell so quick that Will barely avoids getting hit.   
  
"Let's go," Hershel says, and Daryl starts down the stairs slowly, warily. They didn't have a lot of rules on the road, and most of them made sense - don't go off alone, tell people where you're heading, don't sleep on your watch, don't eat without sharing with the others. This might be the first time he's broken an actually stated rule before. He's not sure what will happen - it'd be weird for them to whup him for going to see his dad when the reason they didn't want him going to see his dad was because his dad whupped him. But adults don't always make sense. Especially Rick, especially now, his eyes flickering constantly, looking for ghosts -   
  
But when he gets down there, all that happens is Rick puts a hand on his shoulder and starts steering him away. Hershel limps along behind them, and he hears Will in the cage, shuffling.   
  
"Y'better choose and choose quick, Grimes! Gov ain't one to wait!"  
  
And then they're gone, Hershel shutting the door to D Block behind them, with such care that it barely makes a noise. When they're clear of his father, Daryl finds himself talking.   
  
"I wadn't - I din't go to talk to him or nothin', I just couldn' sleep, I wasn't -"  
  
"It's all right," Rick says. "Sorry you had to see him."  
  
He feels Hershel's gaze on him, feels the back of his neck heat up. It feels like Hershel knows he's been to see him already.   
  
"Daryl." He's been looking at the ground, his feet in their worn boots, but when Rick says his name like that he wants Daryl to look at him. So Daryl does and he sees hard blue eyes looking back at him. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell the others what we were talking about in there. About Michonne."  
  
Daryl nods. Bites his lip. "You're - y'ain't gonna do it though, right? Hand her over?"  
  
Rick's jaw sets. "It's the only way."

Daryl looks away, nods. Feels Hershel looking at him. He swallows, thinks of Michonne, holding her stupid rainbow cat, dropping the bow on the table in front of him. "It just - it ain't us," he mumbles, and he darts a look back up at Rick's face, ready to move out of the way if Rick whops him.   
  
"No. No, it isn't," Hershel says behind him, and Daryl feels himself flush again. This time not with shame - maybe with pride. He doesn't know.

"We do this, we avoid a fight. No one else dies." Rick's voice is desperate at that, and Daryl thinks of Oscar, Axel, T-Dog, Lori. Wonders how Rick thinks he'll be able to stave off death for long, in this world crawling with dead things.  
  
Daryl just shrugs. Rick'll make the choice, not him. It's not a democracy - he said that months ago.   
  
"Take the night," Hershel says softly to Rick. "Think about it. It's not a decision you can just make. And you can't do anything about it now."  
  
Rick hesitates, then nods, jerkily. A think sound goes through the cell block - Judith, crying. Rick jerks in the direction of the noise, but it settles again. He still stares after it.  
  
"Come on, Daryl. Let's go to bed." Hershel starts limping away and Daryl follows him.   
  
Hershel stops at the perch where Daryl sleeps. Daryl hands Hershel the keys he took to get into D Block. Hershel shakes his head. "Put them back in the morning."  
  
It makes Daryl feel guilty. "M'sorry," he says. "I ain't - I din't mean to snoop."  
  
"It's all right." Hershel leans heavily on his crutches. "Are you all right?"  
  
Daryl shrugs. Nods. Bites at his thumb. "I - I been to see him. Before."  
  
"I thought you might have." There's a pause. "Did he - "  
  
"He's locked up," Daryl says quickly. "He couldn't do nothin'."  
  
"He could do plenty."   
  
Daryl shrugs again. Feels it pull slightly on one of his wounds on his back. The rest have almost healed. Soon, it'll be like they never happened.   
  
"He din't," Daryl says, and Hershel nods.   
  
"He's still your father, Daryl. We know that."  
  
Daryl looks up quickly. "He ain't - "  
  
"I just mean - we understand. The ties of blood - they're complicated." 

They are and they aren't. In some things, they're the simplest thing in the world.   
  
"Go to sleep. We all need our rest."   
  
Daryl nods. Crawls into his nest of blankets. Hears Hershel start to limp away.   
  
"Hershel?"  
  
He turns back. Daryl chews at a finger and doesn't know why he called the man back. "Night."  
  
Hershel just smiles at him. "Goodnight, Daryl."  
  
And he's gone. 

* * *

The next day, they're setting spike strips in the field outside the prison - him, Glenn, Michonne. Maggie and Carl distract the walkers. It was Michonne's idea - she grins at Daryl as she slices a walker through the skull like cutting through a melon.   
  
"We're gonna be all right here," she says to Daryl. She seems confident - almost happy, since she got back from the run with Carl and Rick. Like she wants to be there, and not just because they've got numbers. Daryl can't grin back at her. She seems to take that to mean he's worried. "We are. We're gonna make getting us more trouble than it's worth."   
  
He nods and hops in the back of the pickup. Beth's driving, and he can feel her eyes on him in the rearview mirror. He leans down, offers Michonne a hand as she climbs up.They ride back in silence. 

Rick hasn't said anything about last night. Daryl wonders if it was a dream, except that he keeps seeing Rick look at Michonne. It's not easy for him, Daryl knows. He sees Rick wavering, one way, then the other. He wonders which way Rick will fall.   
  
He works hard at preparing for a fight. Maybe if Rick sees that they're ready, that they can handle what the Governor brings, then he won't feel like Michonne is their only option. He and Glenn and Carl siphon gas, stuff rags into bottles. Molotov cocktail. Daryl remembers one summer, maybe he was ten, their dad out on a seemingly endless bender, Merle home from his latest stint in lock up. It was hot, oppressively so, and sticky, and he'd wanted to take off his shirt, go swimming, but he was afraid Merle would see his back. If Merle saw what their dad did to Daryl, he'd kill him. Daryl knew that. And if Merle killed their dad, then Merle'd go to prison for life and Daryl wouldn't have anybody.   
  
On the fourth of July, they'd gone over to Merle's friend Michael's house and made Molotov cocktails. "Poor man's pyrotechnic," Michael had said, which Daryl thought was a dumb excuse because firecrackers weren't exactly hard to find and they had those too. But Michael lived near an old housing development that'd run out of money and they'd gone there that night and busted shit up, set off fireworks, climbed to the roof of one of the buildings and thrown Molotov cocktails down. Merle and Michael'd been drinking all day but just beer, and he remembers the feel of Merle's arm over his shoulder, the warmth of the flames hitting his face. The stars shining overhead.   
  
If Merle were here, he'd have been helping them. They wouldn't have to lock Merle in a cell. 

"Daryl?" Rick's there, then, and Daryl's stomach tenses. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"  
  
He goes over and feels strangely heavy. This is it. Rick's chosen.   
  
"I'm going to send your father out with Michonne."   
  
It's like a punch in the gut. "What?"  
  
"Better not to risk any of our people. We'll send Will with her, anything happens -" Rick doesn't finish the thought.   
  
"Why're you tellin' me?" Because Rick's going to ask Daryl to leave to, to keep his father on track, to make sure Michonne makes it to where she's meant to go, and then he and his father will be gone because Rick is a father too, he wouldn't ever let anyone keep Carl from him - 

But Rick just says, "I wanted to see if you wanted to say goodbye to him." Rick hesitates. "You can - I know you already chose, back at Woodbury, but - if you wanted to make a different choice, we'd -" Rick swallows, shakes his head. "Never mind. I - you're staying here, all right? We need you, here. But - do you want to say goodbye?"  
  
Daryl's head feels light and his arms are buzzing. They're not kicking him out. Not yet. He's so relieved he doesn't know what to do, so he just nods, and Rick claps him on the shoulder.   
  
"All right. You want - me and Hershel, one of us could - or Carol -"  
  
"Naw," Daryl says. His throat feels rusty. "Naw, I - I kin do it alone."  
  
"All right." 

* * *

He enters through the main door to the cell block and that means his father sees him the second he walks in. Will grins at him, but harsh. Like Daryl is the thing that's funny, Daryl's the joke.   
  
"Look who it is. Y'slip away from your master, lil dog? Or he send you in here?"  
  
"He let me come." 

"Let you. Fuckin' Dixon, beggin' at the feet of some pig. Makes me sick."  
  
"I'm - just here to say, um. Bye." It sounds stupid even to Daryl's ears, and he feels himself blush and look at the ground. What do you say? With so much between them, it feels like there's nothing left that hasn't been said or everything, and he doesn't know where to start, or if he should start at all.   
  
Will grunts. "Hell, ain't sure you should be sayin' your goodbyes just yet. Ol' Will ain't goin' nowhere."  
  
Daryl squints. Did Rick not tell him? Did he think Daryl would do it? "They're - Rick said they're gonna send you -"  
  
"Oh, I heard all about what Sheriff Rick said. Master plan. Too bad he'll never do it."  
  
It's a relief and a tension in his stomach - to think Rick might not do it, that they'll keep Michonne, but that it means his father will stay here too.

"He ain't got the stomach for it. He'll buckle."

"If he don't, he don't."  
  
Will looks at him and spits. It almost hits Daryl's shoe. "Y'really are his pet now, huh? Little lapdog, trail him for scraps, whatever he don't give his own boy, you'll take. Fuckin' sheep. Whatever he says goes, huh?"  
  
Daryl looks away. Shrugs. "Guess."  
  
"Pathetic. I ain't raised you like that. What happened to you?"  
  
Everything. And nothing. And a year in a life at the end of the world that somehow, sometimes, felt like it was the best year he'd ever had. Nothing, though, has happened to his father. His father has not changed. Maybe he cannot. Maybe he never could.   
  
"Y'think these are good people you've landed with?"  
  
Daryl thinks of Glenn, of Maggie. Of Carl, of Beth, cradling Judith. Of Hershel, of Rick. And of Carol. "They are."  
  
"Ain't no such animal. Jus' people, plain and simple. Your man Rick, that fucker Hershel, y'all look at me like I'm the devil... grabbing up those lovebirds like that, huh? Now Rick wants to do the same damn thing I did - snatch someone up and deliver them to the Gov, just like me. Yeah. People do what they got to do or they die. That's jus' how people work. You expect more'n that, you're gonna be disappointed."

Daryl looks away. Shrugs. It's different, somehow. It's got to be, or Rick wouldn't do it. Maybe he won't do it. Maybe he will buckle, like his dad says. Because Rick is good, Daryl knows. He's a man of honor.   
  
He'll do what he needs to do. For all of them.

"These people need somebody like me 'round, huh? Do their dirty work. The bad guy. Yeah, maybe that's how it is now, huh? How's that hit you? Y'throw aside your pops, and what do you find? Y'need people like me, keep this world runnin'."   
  
Daryl shifts.   
  
"Y'should come with me. These people're weak. They make it through the Gov, it'll be a miracle. An' the next time, they won't be so lucky." His father is looking at him with bloodshot eyes. "An' next time, I won't be 'round to save their asses."  
  
Daryl looks at his father - really looks at him. The close cut of his hair, the bags under his eyes, the way his right arm pulls lower with the metal apparatus attached. He looks old, suddenly. Daryl tries to remember what he looked like when his mother was alive - were things different then? If she were still alive, would things be different now? - but he can't pull it up. All he can see is his father, drunk, high, mad, always mad. Never tired, not like this. Never old.   
  
Daryl takes a step back. "Bye," he says again. His throat feels thick and weird, not like he's going to cry like a baby, but - just different. He turns around and goes for the door.   
  
"You are my boy," he can hear his father say behind him. "They won't ever be able to change that."  
  
And Daryl, as he steps out of the main cell block door, hopes he's wrong.

* * *

Hershel is reading the bible with Maggie and Beth. Daryl and Carl never join in, though Daryl imagines Carl is more familiar with the bible than Daryl is. He doesn't believe in that praying shit, but it's soothing to listen to Hershel's voice - deep, his accent slow and gentle, the words old and rich and beautiful. Carl kicks his leg - Hershel had said something about 'the arrow that flieth by day' - when they hear the sounds from the yard.   
  
The bible tumbles to the table, forgotten. Maggie and Beth are halfway to the door, guns out, but Carl and Daryl are ahead of them. He can hear Hershel behind, struggling to leverage himself up, and Carol is settling Judith in her new crib as they burst out the door.   
  
That's how Daryl ends up between Rick and his father. 

Michonne is already tied up. There's a telephone cord wrapped around her wrists and Daryl's wrists ache in sympathy - that's what his dad had tied him with in Woodbury. Will is shoving her into the back of a truck and she's fighting him until his dad clocks her on the head with his stump. She goes limp, boneless, and Will finishes putting her in easily. Rick has his hands out, is yelling at Will "We're not doing this! Stop!" And he keeps looking over his shoulder, at the walkway. Probably at Shane or Lori or T-Dog or Sophia, who the hell knows, at some invisible dead person. Daryl doesn't care who it is because at least they've done one good thing. They've made Rick change his mind. Michone is going to stay.   
  
At least, that's what Daryl thinks until his dad grabs him.   
  
It's an instinct that never left him - the urge to shrink away, to squirm out, and he does the second he feels his father's one good hand on his shoulder. But then something sharp pricks at his neck and he stills. It's his dad's stump. He got a new knife for it.   
  
"Daryl!" he hears Carol scream, and she's raising her gun, and Will tugs Daryl close to him, almost like a hug, but wrong and too tight and only to use him as a shield, so that he can get away.   
  
"You let him go!" Rick thunders, stepping forward, but Daryl could have told them all it was too late. When his dad gets hands on him, it's almost impossible to get free. That's just the way it's always been.   
  
"Hey, now, I'll do you your favor, no need to get fidgety," Will yells from behind Daryl. Daryl abruptly realizes that he is almost as tall as his father now. "Take the black bitch to the Gov, I'll even tell him y'sent me. But I ain't leavin' without whats mine. Y'understand." He opens the door to the truck and pulls Daryl in after him, still shielding him from one side. Daryl thinks he can see Carl, sneaky as always, trying to get around to the other side of the car.   
  
"Daryl! Rick, do something! Daryl!"

"Drive," his dad says. He's got the knife at Daryl's throat still, and Daryl can feel a trickle of blood, hot, trailing down his neck. "Let's get out of here."  
  
He thinks about crashing it into the gate, but the field is full of walkers and his throat is already bleeding and Will won't hesitate, he knows. He wants Daryl but he wants his own hide more and he'll gladly give Daryl over to death if it means he can get loose.   
  
So he drives.   
  
And hears Carol, screaming, as they pull away. 

* * *

"Stop it here," his dad says after a while. The knife has never left his throat, and Daryl realizes he can't remember the last thing he said. To anybody. To Carol. Daryl stops the car. "A'right. Get out."   
  
Daryl opens the car door first. Steps out. His neck feels weirdly naked without the blade pointed to it. When he reaches up, there's blood.   
  
"Get back in there," his dad says, and shoves Daryl over to the passenger seat. Gets in front. "I ain't too good driving with jus' the one hand, so you best not try anythin' or you'll get us all killed."  
  
Daryl just nods. Rubs at his throat. Looks out the window.   
  
He can hear Michonne stirring in the back and he stiffens. looks in the rearview mirror - can see her eyes, open, looking at him. He shakes his head, minutely, and he doesn't know what he's trying to say - don't wake up? That he's not part of this? - but Michonne seems to understand and her eyes close again.   
  
"He buckled. Your man back there. Always knew he would. Pussy."  
  
Daryl doesn't say anything.   
  
"Well? Ain'tcha gonna thank me? I just saved your life, boy."  
  
Daryl's throat feels sticky and itchy as the blood dries.   
  
"Grimes is stupid as shit he thinks the Gov'll just take Michonne an' forget about the rest of them."  
  
Daryl looks at his father then. "You said he would."  
  
"Boy, I was locked in a damn cell, I say what I gotta, get them to let me out."  
  
"Then - why'd you take her at all?" Why not just go, Daryl thinks, why not just leave, why take Michonne and Daryl too.   
  
"Won't work for them. Might work for us. We show up with her, it'll change a lotta things 'bout how we left. An' you're my boy. I'll explain it to the Gov. I'll getcha back on the right track. He won't have nothin' to worry 'bout from you, here on in."   
  
Daryl thinks of the Governor's one, pitiless eye, thinks about the strange conversation in the cell at Woodbury. _No room for behavior like that in a civilized world._ He wonders what kind of reception Will is expecting and if there's any reality in it. 

Will took his knife. He sees it resting in the center console. Will's stump is resting on top of it, but if he moves it, gets the knife, gets it to Michonne to get her hands free - 

Then what? 

Will keeps talking.   
  
"Sheriff Rick back there, he asked me, y'even know why you do the things you do? Choices you make? Hell, what'd he think I am, some kinda animal, a sheep like you, can't think for myself?" 

He has to time it right, Daryl thinks. Has to gauge it, too. He makes his dad too mad, he'll end up with that knife in him, and he doesn't want that. 

"I know why I do what I do. 'Cause that's what it takes. That's all it comes to, in the end. You do what you gotta or y'ain't here anymore." Will looks over at Daryl, quick, before putting his eyes on the road. "You know that. You do."  
  
Daryl is quiet. Does he?  
  
"Even if you forgot with these fuckers, you're a Dixon, boy. That's your blood. That's all you'll ever come out to. You fight it, it's jus' gonna make it harder on you." His dad almost sounds sympathetic which makes Daryl's skin crawl. "You're my boy. Always will be."  
  
"Ain't fuckin' yours. Ain't never gonna be," Daryl says. And braces himself.   
  
He knows his father, he thinks, better than anyone else on earth, and even he never knows what will get a reaction. Normally it goes the other way - he's trying not to get hit and he says the wrong thing and gets hit anyway. This time, he wants to get walloped. It's a weird feeling, to be asking for it.   
  
And he gets it. Good.   
  
The metal stump slams into his cheekbone and Daryl gasps, loud. His hands scrabble over the center console, the handle of the door, like he's trying to brace himself. His cheekbone is on fire - what if it's broken, what if he - but the knife doesn't hit him so he's grateful for that.   
  
And, as his hands comb over the console, now vacated by his dad's arm, he slides the knife back, as quick as he can. Hears it thump gently on the carpeted floor. Michonne, who he could hear start struggling when his dad hit him, goes still.   
  
Daryl bends over, cradles his cheek in his hands. Pokes carefully - doesn't know how he'd know if it was broken, but it's not like he feels pieces of bone coming apart like a jigsaw puzzle in his eye socket, so he guesses he's okay. And when he comes back, he can hear his dad ranting at him.   
  
"The fuck's the matter with you? I just saved your ass, boy! I coulda run without you and left you there with your stupid Sheriff Rick, with the cripple and Ed's bitch and a chink and some fuckin' kids to have your back, but I din't! You know why? Cause you're my son! I dunno what sort of shit those fuckers filled your head with but you better unfill it pretty damn soon or I'll leave you 'fore I even get back to the Governor, y'hear? Hey!" Something thunks him on the back - the prosthetic again. "Y'fuckin hear?"  
  
"Yessir," Daryl mumbles.   
  
"Ungrateful fuck. Shit. You keep your fuckin' mouth shut when we get back to the Gov, a'right? Don't talk t'anyone till we get your head on straight again. Shouldn't be hard, y'fuckin' mute shit, you -"  
  
And his father keeps mumbling, cursing, spitting. He doesn't notice that the knife is gone. He can't feel it, he realizes. His dad can't tell the knife is no longer on the center console under his arm.   
  
"Buckled," he hears from the backseat, and he freezes. Looks in the rearview mirror. Michonne is up, awake. He can't see the knife anywhere, but can tell by the way she's holding her hands, her fingers hidden and gripping tight. "Rick did?"  
  
"Well, look who it is," Will laughs. "Our own Nubian princess, woke from her slumber. Hope we din't disturb your rest, precious. Might be the last good sleep you get for a long time."   
  
"Buckled," Michonne says again. She's looking at Daryl, he can tell, in the rearview. Then her eyes cut right, towards the passenger door.   
  
"Yeah, he folded like a deck a cards. Didn't have the balls to hand you over. Don' worry now, my boy and me, we ain't got -"  
  
And that's when she strikes.   
  
Daryl had started inching for the seat belt after she'd looked at the door. He hadn't been wearing one. Neither was Will. But he stops with stealth and goes quick as Michonne stabs into his dad's neck. He barely gets it buckled before they hit.   
  
He's not sure right away what they ran into. There's steam or something coming from the front of the car, and his chest is on fire. He's coughing and he can hear Michonne in the backseat.   
  
"Are you all right? Daryl? Daryl, can you -"   
  
"M'fine," he coughs, and with shaking hands he unbuckles his seatbelt. "Fine, let's go, quick, before he -"  
  
"Daryl," Michonne says.   
  
And that's when he realizes.   
  
His dad is no longer in the car.

* * *

He doesn't know which it is - the stab to the neck, getting thrown through the windshield, the impact with the tree. But Will Dixon isn't alive anymore when Daryl finds him. 

He's not dead, either.   
  
His body is torn up and twisted from the crash - he can't move much. He's snapping and twisting and growling but his legs are shattered beneath him. Daryl feels a lump in his throat.   
  
Michonne is next to him. She doesn't say anything at first.   
  
"I'm sorry."  
  
"Don't," Daryl grunts. He wipes at his nose. It's running - with blood, maybe. Maybe he hit it when they crashed. "Knew it'd happen. Got you the knife anyway."   
  
Still. It's one thing to know, and another to see it.   
  
He stares a little longer, then feels Michonne going for his hand. He's about to spit on her, scream at her - he's not some fucking baby who wants his fucking hand held, he's not - but she's just putting his own knife into it. She closes his fingers around it.   
  
"I'm going to see what's left in the car," she says quietly. And she goes.   
  
It takes Daryl longer than he thought to join her - hands soaked with blood, shirt spattered with it. Behind him, his dad's face is practically pulp, and he isn't moving anymore.   
  
Michonne found her sword in the trunk, and an extra gun, which she gives to Daryl. He checks it numbly, slides his knife (already cleaned off) into its sheath on his hip. He wishes he had his bow.  
  
They start walking. 

* * *

It's almost dark before the others find them.   
  
They're hiding on the side of the road - the car is coming from the direction of the prison, but still. Better safe than sorry. When Michonne sees the car, the plates, she's stepping out, holding her sword out to flag them down.   
  
Rick is driving. He pulls up, face full of relief. "You got away. Thank god. Where's -"  
  
But the passenger of the car is already out. It's Carol and she's running for him, not caring about walkers or anything, just full running. She slams into him so hard it jostles his chest where the seatbelt cut into it, but he doesn't make a sound. He just holds her back as she clutches him, running her hands over him, almost franticly.   
  
"Daryl, sweetheart - you're all right? Daryl, you're all right, thank god, thank - I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I -"   
  
"Where's Will?" Rick asks, and that's when Daryl thinks this is when he should start crying. He doesn't though. He just stands there, lump in his throat, eye burning, clinging to Carol. She clings right back.   
  
Michonne is saying something to Rick and they're all loading back into the car - he and Carol in the backseat. "It's okay, Daryl," she keeps saying, running her hands over his face, his hair. "You're going to be all right. I'm sorry, Daryl. I'm so, so, sorry."  
  
"You found me," he says. And it's the only thing he says until the arrive back at the prison.


	16. Welcome to the Tombs

When they get back, everyone is packing and Daryl tries to throws himself right back into it. 

Rick had tried to talk to him in the car, but Carol had told Rick to leave it. He felt wrung out and words weren't ever his friends anyways. He kept quiet. Carol is only just calming down as they pull up the dirt drive to the prison, and when he gets out of the car, she is right behind him, his shadow.   
  
He doesn't mind. With Carol there, no one is going to try and make him talk. He must look bad because Maggie puts her had to her mouth, Hershel takes a staggering step forward - but they don't follow as Carol leads him back to the cell block.   
  
"Get into some fresh clothes," she says. "You'll feel better."  
  
Distantly, Daryl wonders what that means, if he will ever feel better. But he doesn't say anything. He just changes. Carol goes away and comes back with some water, a cloth. He's halfway through taking his shirt off when she does.  
  
It's maybe the first time Carol has seen, really seen, his back, and Daryl wonders, from that same far off place, why he cared so much if people saw it. He's fucked up and his back is fucked up and everything is fucked up and what does it matter now? His dad is dead. He killed him.   
  
His dad is never going to touch him again and the thought makes Daryl want to laugh or cry or scream.   
  
He doesn't do any of those things. He stands there, motionless, as Carol comes in, slowly, sets the bowl of water down.   
  
"Let me clean up your face."  
  
He doesn't understand these people. He never will, not if he lives with them a million years. They aren't blood. Their rules are strange and bizarre and the consequences are nebulous and he doesn't know what happens now. How long will they keep him around, some shitty orphan who killed his own father? Not forever.   
  
Carol reaches out with the rag and he doesn't even flinch. He wishes someone would pop him one already, whup him with their belt, put their cigarette out on his arm, do something. He's done wrong and he needs to be punished. But no one here will do it, they won't even acknowledge it, and he feels sick to his stomach with how much he wants Carol to hit him, just so he'd know, just so it would be over.   
  
But she doesn't. She wipes his face, his arms, his hands. She offers him the rag first but he doesn't move, so she does it. He remembers Shane doing the same thing to Carol, after Sophia died, wiping her down, her scratched up arms, her muddy hands.   
  
"I used to do this for Sophia," she says, and that makes Daryl flinch. "When she was sick, or had a fever. Or a nightmare. I told her, well, I'll just wipe that away, and then you'll feel better."   
  
"She believe that?"  
  
Carol smiles. "For a while, she did."   
  
It is soothing, in a way, to feel the sweat and the dirt of the road, the blood (his own? His dad's?), all of it being washed away. But that in itself feels uncomfortable, because he's not sure he wants to be soothed. He doesn't want to feel better.   
  
He doesn't know what he wants.   
  
"What's gonna happen now?" he asks, and is hugely grateful that she just answers the most basic level of that question.   
  
"We've got a plan. We all need to pack up."  
  
He nods.   
  
"Daryl?"  
  
Daryl makes himself look at her.   
  
"I know you're hurting."  
  
"Ain't," he says woodenly. And he's not. He doesn't feel anything.   
  
"When Ed -"  
  
"My dad wasn't Ed," Daryl snarls, and is ashamed to see Carol flinch, slightly at that. "Y'didn't kill Ed."  
  
"No. I only wanted to." She pauses.  
  
"Me too," Daryl whispers. He looks away and feels cool fingers under his chin.   
  
"Hey. That isn't what happened."  
  
"You wouldn't know, weren't fuckin' there -"  
  
"You didn't kill your dad."   
  
Daryl shakes his head. "I got her the knife. I knew what she'd do with it. I wanted her to."  
  
"That's okay. That's what you needed to do."  
  
"Ain't like he even wanted to hurt me. Was gon' turn Michonne over. Get the Governor to take him'n'me back."  
  
"You did the right thing."  
  
"I stabbed him. Like ten times, in the face. He din't even have a face anymore, when I was done." 

"You saw what I did to Ed."  
  
He had. But Carol hadn't ever deserved what Ed did to her. Daryl wasn't as sure about himself.   
  
"It's not - no one is expecting you to just be okay." Her fingers card through his hair and he resists the urge to just melt into them, to close his eyes and go to sleep and never wake up. "But - you're a good person, Daryl. This was a terrible thing that had to happen, but you didn't make it happen. You're good."  
  
"I ain't," he says roughly. 

"You are. You're the best. You saved me, Daryl."  
  
"Someone else woulda found you in the tombs, I was just -"  
  
"No, Daryl. Although, I guess it says something that you can't even remember which time I'm talking about." She looks at him and says, softly, "After Sophia, I - I don't know what I -" She swallows, looks away. Turns back and pats his hands. "You saved me," she says again. "You're good. The world isn't and that's the world's problem. You, Daryl Dixon, you're good."  
  
He swallows, and she sniffs, wipes her eyes, looks away. "All right, well. We've got some work to do."

* * *

And then he's back in it and no one else tries to talk to him about it. There's no time for that anyway. They've got to move. Fast.  
  
They pack up everything - the pots and pans, the clothes, anything useful they'd found or made or mended. They'd gone into the prison with the clothes on their backs and the sleeping bags under their arms. They leave with more. A lot more. Carl is mad - he's stomping around with a face like stone, not letting anyone talk to him - but everyone else is just purposeful. Beth looks a little sad, her arms full with Judith, who coos quietly, a hand shoved in her mouth. 

The prison echoes quietly behind them and they melt away to their separate hiding places. They've all got a job to do. 

It's strange to sit in the generator room and try to understand what's unfolding outside. He can feel the vibrations, hear several large booms, some very quiet gunshots. But they are insulated, down below, and the noises devoid from context are meaningless. What are they hitting? What are they shooting at? Daryl doesn't know.   
  
He's waiting in the generator room for the signal. Carol too. When they hear the flashbang go, they light the whole system up. Carol looks at the generator fondly.   
  
"Axel did a good job," she whispers, but then the noises are getting closer - aren't gunshots anymore, but footsteps. They wait.   
  
And then there goes the flashbang and Daryl flips the switch and they are spilling out into the hallway, firing at shadows.   
  
They use the generator room door as a shield - in the chaos and the shooting, the sounds of walkers and screams of the Woodbury people, Daryl wonders how much of the damage they're inflicting on themselves. After the first volley, he and Carol close themselves back into the generator room. He can hear them, firing on each other, until that dies down and he hears "Go, go, go!" and the sound of people running, fleeing.   
  
Daryl counts to 300. It's silent as the grave out there. "Ready?" Carol asks.   
  
He is. With her next to him, he's ready for anything. 

He can hear shooting again, way closer - Glenn and Maggie, catching them as they run. 

He and Carol go through the hallway, quick. Daryl has his knife and they stab every body laying there, once quick, in the head. He tries not to think about what they'll do if they come across someone injured, someone who needs help, but they don't. In that way, it's easy.   
  
They head up through the prison carefully, in case it's a trick, in case there are stragglers. There aren't. Rick and the others are out at the gate, looking out onto the field - the Governor's men had cleared it of walkers but the guard tower at the front is smoking, and another one is pocked with bullet holes.

"We did it. We drove them out."  
  
"We should go after them," Michonne says. And Daryl agrees.   
  
"We should finish it." Rick looks at him, but Daryl doesn't flinch. He thinks about his dad, disappearing into the streets of Atlanta and turning up later, causing nothing but trouble. Who knows when the Governor will turn up next, and what havoc he'll wreak when he does?  
  
"It is finished," Maggie argues. "Didn't you see them hightail it outta here?" She's swinging her gun onto her shoulder and Daryl sees, on one finger, a sparkle he'd never seen before. 

"They could regroup," Michonne points out.

"We can't take that chance," Glenn says fiercely. "They're not gonna stop."  
  
"They're right," Carol says. She's looking at Daryl, then looks back at Rick. "We can't keep living like this."  
  
"So we take the fight back to Woodbury? We barely made it back last time! Daryl got -"  
  
"I don't care," Daryl grunts.   
  
And that's that. They check on the others - Carl in a weird mood, not angry anymore, but confident.   
  
"Dad, I'm coming to Woodbury."  
  
Rick groans. "Carl -"  
  
"Dad, I did my job out there! Just like all of you. Like Daryl. Took out one of the Governor's soldiers."  
  
"One of his soldiers? A kid running away? He stumbled across us."  
  
"No, he drew on us!" Carl argues, his cheeks going pink.   
  
"I'm sorry you had to do that," Rick says, and Carl looks confused.   
  
"It's what I was there for." And then Carl is going away, comes over to Daryl, where Daryl is loading up his crossbow. He looks down at the boy - what is he, eleven now? Maybe twelve? - and he's never felt the gap between them so much. He thinks about the guys he killed at Woodbury in the first attack. Thinks about Dale in the field at Hershel's, gripping his hand. Thinks about his father.   
  
"I got one," Carl says proudly, and he starts loading ammunition into his pockets. "I'm coming with you guys. To Woodbury."  
  
"Shouldn't," Daryl says. "S'dangerous."  
  
"You're going!"   
  
"I ain't talkin' about the fighting." Carl looks confused again. "Man, they had any choice, they'd leave me behind."  
  
"I won't let them leave me behind. It's safer with me there. I'm not a kid."  
  
Daryl looks at Carl and wonders if this is how he looks to the others when he says it. Carl's cheeks are round and covered in freckles and that dumbass hat makes him look like he's playing dress up. Sheriff Carl. The Wild West. Daryl shrugs.   
  
"Ain't like it's fun, killin' people," he mutters. "S'just - what's gotta be done."  
  
"Well, duh. I know that."   
  
Daryl looks at him. "I dunno, man. Maybe you don't." Daryl starts walking over to where the others are regrouping.   
  
"Hey!" Carl says, and Daryl turns to look at him. The other boy looks pissed. "He's - he's my dad, okay? Just because your dad sucked and he's dead doesn't mean you can take mine!"  
  
The boy looks like he regrets it the second it's out of his mouth. Daryl twists his lip.   
  
"Got it," he says. And he turns away. 

* * *

Rick leaves Carl behind. Daryl watches in the side mirrors of his dirt bike as Carl stares at them, watches them go. Him, Rick, and Michonne. Carol had asked him if he wanted to stay behind too, but he shook his head. "Might need to track him," he says. And that's something only he could do. So he goes.   
  
They don't get very far before they find what's left of the Woodbury people.   
  
The woman - the survivor - slams her hands against the window, and it takes Daryl a moment to understand she's holding up her arms in surrender. He wonders, if she hadn't been behind the glass window of the jeep, if he would have done what Carl did. 

He doesn't know. 

She's a mess. She sees the people - her people - and her face crumples and Rick guides her back to their car, puts her in the backseat.   
  
"He killed us," she whispers once, when Rick and Michonne go out to look for other survivors, leaving Daryl standing outside of the truck, keeping watch. "He killed us."  
  
Daryl opens a bottle of water, passes it to her through the window. She stares at it like she's never seen it before. Takes it. Drinks.   
  
"Sorry," he says. "Bout your friends."   
  
She laughs something that might have been a sob. "We trusted him."  
  
"Yeah." He kicks at the ground. "Sucks."  
  
Then she laughs a real laugh - a brief one. "Yeah. Sucks." She looks at Daryl, and her face twists again. "How old are you?"  
  
Daryl shrugs. "Think I'm sixteen, now." It's possible. Probably he's only fifteen. He might even still be fourteen, but he doesn't think so. They're moving into their second fall, and his birthday is the beginning of summer. June 10th, he remembers. It's information that feels totally insignificant.   
  
"I'm Karen."  
  
Daryl nods. "Daryl."  
  
"Is there - do you see a boy, a little younger than you - he's wearing a baseball hat, he's got brown hair - is he -"  
  
Daryl looks over to where Rick and Michonne are. At their feet, a walker with a baseball hat claws weakly up at them. Michonne ends it with one swift stab through the eye.   
  
"Sorry," Daryl says again, and the woman sags back into the seat, closes her eyes.   
  
She goes with them to Woodbury. Tyreese, one of the guys that had booked it from the prison when Rick went nuts, is there, and he's shooting at them until Karen tells him to stop. Daryl doesn't think it's enough, fully expects Tyreese to pepper them with bullets, especially seeing Rick at his worst, but he doesn't. He lets them in. 

They find the very old and the very young. 

And they find Andrea.

* * *

"I tried to stop them," Andrea says. She looks sick, pale, feverish. She looks like she's dying.   
  
Daryl stares at her. The wound in her neck is almost exactly where her sister's was. Daryl can't remember the other blonde girls name anymore, but he can see her - laughing with Carol and Lori down at the water, biting her lip trying to catch fish. Remembers Andrea's vigil, by her side, the way Daryl offered to shoot her from a distance so they wouldn't have to tangle with Andrea. He remembers telling Andrea the story about him getting lost - one of the only people he'd ever told. He didn't tell her about the poison oak for toilet paper incident, and suddenly he's full of regret. He should have told her. She was one of them.   
  
"Judith - Carl - the rest of them -"  
  
"Us," Rick says fiercely, and Daryl feels himself nodding behind Rick. Us. She's earned that. She'd tried. "The rest of us."  
  
"Are they alive?"  
  
"Yeah. They're alive."   
  
She smiles, and Andrea's eyes find Daryl. "Daryl - I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't -"  
  
"S'okay," he says, and it is. It's fine.   
  
It's over.

"It's good you found them," Andrea says to Michonne, and she looks at Daryl. "No one can make it alone now."  
  
He never could. He wonders what she remembers - what she saw of him, all those months ago at the quarry, his father's son. He's not that person now and maybe he hasn't been for a long time. He wonders what she sees now, looking at him.   
  
He looks away. Backs up - lets Rick give Andrea the gun, lets settle herself in. Andrea looks at him and Daryl just nods.   
  
"I tried," Andrea says.  
  
"Yeah. You did," Rick says.   
  
She did.   
  
They close the door. Let her have her privacy, her final moment. Let Michonne sit her vigil.  
  
And then the gunshot. And it's over.

* * *

The prison is loud with the Woodbury people. It's hard to find space to think, to be alone. Daryl's perch isn't so solitary anymore, even though the Woodbury people keep mostly to D Block. Carl doesn't say anything about it, at least not to Daryl. He looks at the Woodbury people, his mouth a thin line, and he looks at Daryl and he looks away.   
  
Carol looks at the Woodbury people like they're visitors from another planet - without recognition, but with a stunned kind of delight. There are others out there. Rick looks at them like they're hope in human form.   
  
Daryl just thinks they're people. But they're everywhere. Talking in the shower room, laughing over meals, bickering over every little thing. It's like when he used to watch TV on mute some mornings, to not wake his dad, and he'd jostle the button or Merle would steal the remote and then suddenly it was twice as loud as ever before, blaring everywhere, inescapable. He misses the quiet, sometimes, and he misses the perch when he sets up in a cell.   
  
Carol comes by with some things for him - some blankets, clean laundry. A brownie, fresh from the kitchens. "A homecoming present," she says, and Daryl blushes, puts it to the side for later.   
  
"When you're free," Carol says, brushing at his hair, "Hershel wants to talk to you about something.   
  
"What?" He lets Carol mess with his hair. It's getting long now, almost into his eyes, and he likes it. He doesn't mind Carol touching it, either. Most of the time.   
  
"Well. It's about the Prison Council."  
  
He stiffens. What does the Council want to do with him? Is he in trouble? He thinks about the early mornings when he sneaks outside the prison, sits by the creek. But that's just to get some quiet, it's so goddamn loud everywhere all the time now -  
  
"I din't do nothin'," he says quickly, and Carol laughs.   
  
"Said like someone with a guilty conscience." She smiles at him, but then gets serious. "No, he - he wants to talk to you about joining the Council."  
  
The words don't make sense in his head. "Joining the Council for what?"   
  
"As a member, pookie. Being a Council Member."   
  
He stares at her. It still doesn't make any sense. "I - I can't. I'm just a kid."  
  
"Oh no, you better let Hershel know - you say you're not a kid so much we all started to believe you." Daryl jostles her shoulder. "I think he means more as a junior member of sorts. He's trying to get people from all of the groups in the prison - women, men, black people, white people, Asians, Woodbury, our group. He wants everyone to feel they've got a voice. It's a pretty big age gap between Sasha and you." She jostles his shoulder back, gently. "The younger people trust you. They look up to you. Even the older ones, the eighteen and nineteen year olds."  
  
He thinks about Carl, the glares he's been getting from the other boy. "Carl wouldn't like it," he mumbles.   
  
"It's not about Carl. It's about you." Carol smiles at him. "It's because you're good, Daryl. And you care about what's good for other people. That's all. Talk to Hershel about it. You don't have to do it, if you don't want." She smoothes his hair one more time. "But Hershel picked you for a reason. And you should remember that."  
  
He swallows. Nods. Carol leans over and plants a kiss on his forehead. It's still strange, how she touches him - like she's making sure he's still there, like touching him reminds her of something or energizes her, like a battery. A lot of times he ducks away, won't take it, and he's always worried she'll be hurt or upset but she never is. She just backs off. And she'll always try again. No one else can do it - one of the Woodbury people tried the other day and he'd almost knocked them down before he knew what was happening. But it's different with her.   
  
It feels like coming home.   
  
"You got watch tonight?"  
  
"Yeah," Daryl grunts. "Third watch."  
  
"Don't forget to bundle up. It's getting cold out there."  
  
He rolls his eyes. "A'right, mom," he grumbles, and freezes. Darts a look at her. Can't read the look on her face. "It was - I was - sorry," he blurts out, and she just looks at him. Then, after a long moment, she smiles.   
  
"Don't mom me, just wear your gloves." She gets up and heads for the door.   
  
"I - sorry," he says one more time, and Carol turns and looks at him.   
  
"You have nothing to apologize for," she says simply. And then she's gone.   
  
And for the first time in a long time, maybe in his whole life, maybe he doesn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay - season 3, over! Season 4 to come!


End file.
